2 Inflected and Uninflected Adjectives in Japanese 71TABLE 10.
Inflected Uninflected
(no) -4 *• (no)
Phonology:
Restricted Unrestricted
Semantics:
Gradable Mainly gradable? Mainly ungradable?
All major semantic types Most semantic types Few semantic types
Some states
Stratum/morphology:
Simple items native Native (mainly complex)
-kal-yakal-raka -me (gradable)
Mimetic (complex)
Some states
Many ungradable
Sino (many complex)
Formal style
Foreign (mainly simple)
- Conclusions
Given a linguistic description, word classification requires a theoretical stance in
terms of the selection and weighting of criteria. The following particular questions
arise for Japanese: (a) Inflected adjectives and verbs (including negatives) are mor-
phologically alike (all inflected) but show differences; are these differences suffi-
cient for assignment to different word classes? (b) Similarly, Uninflected no. adjec-
tives, no adjectives, and nouns are morphologically alike (all Uninflected) but show
differences; are these differences sufficient for the assignment of Uninflected adjec-
tives and nouns to different classes (and insufficient for the separation of no. and
no adjectives into different classes)? (c) Finally, inflected adjectives and uninflect-
ed no. and no adjectives differ, above all in morphology, but also show similarities.
Are the similarities sufficient for assignment to the same word class?
If inflection is the only criterion, the answer to this final question is clearly 'no';
other criteria will involve the weighting of finer aspects of morphosyntax and
derivational behaviour.
Not surprisingly, different approaches have yielded different schemes for these
items. Uehara (1998), in a cognitive grammar framework, takes inflection vs. non-
inflection (associated in Japanese with bound vs. free roots) as the primary division
both combine with no). Given the added complication of multiple membership with nouns in some
cases, it is perhaps not surprising that no adjectives have commonly not been clearly recognized.