3.1. REVISITS AND SIMPLE INFLECTIONS 93
was simply not required, simply aren’t accepted as natural speech when
you use them.
Secondly, the two irregular verbal adjectives, and , have
their own forms. The ( ) form exists, but does not, and rather
than there is
. For , there is no , except in the paĴern
, which will be treated in the section on impressions and likeness,
and there are no or variants either.
More noun forms: +
A more subtle noun form for verbs is the ”way of doing ...” noun form.
For instance, ”the way one reads” in English is a full noun phrase, but in
Japanese it’s a compound noun of a verb in paired with the noun
, pronounced in this use, and meaning ”way”. Thus,
meaning
”read” becomes , meaning ”way of reading”.
”It’s hard for people who aren’t used to the ”way of using” chop-
sticks.”The verb ”to use”, , is a transitive verb, and since transitive
verbs have their direct object marked with , thesubphrase”to use chop-
sticks” could be. However, since both and are
nouns, we can also choose to use to link them together. The difference
is the following, noting the placement of the brackets:
( )
”The way in which one does ’using chopsticks’”( )
”The ’way of doing’ for chopsticks”Both express the same idea, but the emphasis in the first sentence
lies on the fact that it’s about using chopsticks, while the emphasis in the
second sentence simply lies with the ’way of using’ something, which in
this case happens to be chopsticks.