124 CHAPTER 3. MORE GRAMMAR
Presumptive
The presumptive form uses the pseudo-future of the copula ( / ) to
turn verbs into presumed acts. While this form uses the of the cop-
ula verb, the verb conjugation itself is actually technically a con-
jugation, and therefore is explained in more detail in the section on
. For now, it suffices to say that it lets us say things like ”This computer
will probably still work” or ”I am sure my coffee isn’t cold yet” and similar
presumptive statements in Japanese:
”The coffee’s probably cold by now.”The pseudo-future + + verbs
One of the special things about the pseudo-future is that when combined
with several verbs, the intuitive meaning isn’t always preserved. We can
distinguish at least two such cases: the pseudo-future + + and
pseudo-future + +
. While [...]+ + normally means ”to con-
sider something [...]”, the meaning changes to ”at the point of doing [...]”
when combined with a pseudo-future:
”As (we) were about to eat, the phone rang.”Similarly, on its own means ”to think”, but used with the pseudo-
future the construction becomes more nuanced, and expressing ”to think
about [...]”:
”(I)’m thinking about writing a leĴer.”Negative pseudo-future
Since the pseudo-future doesn’t quite end on a new verb that can be placed
in a , creating the negative form cannot be done using or.
Instead, the negative pseudo-future uses the classical helper verb. To
make maĴers slightly more confusing, while verbs use their
as base, verbs use their as a basis for negative pseudo-future.