An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

136 CHAPTER 3. MORE GRAMMAR

some action (taken by someone) has inconvenienced you, or someone else.

Let us look at how this works:

active, ”Someone stole my (younger) brother’s bicycle.”

passive, ”My brother was bestolen of his bike by someone.”

Now, ”bestolen” is not a grammatically correct English term, but it

does illustrate the nature of the action. However, this form only applies to

actions that were taken by someone, which inconvenienced you (or some-

one else). In the following sentence, for instance, the verb form is merely

passive rather than a ”passive form of bother”:

”(I) was rained on.”

While inconvenient, this is not a , because the rain isn’t

actively inconveniencing you - it is simply something that happens. Re-

member that for a passive to also be a , the act has to have been

performed, intentionally, by someone.

In addition to describing the passive and passive form of bother, the

helper verbs and are also used to formpotentialverb construc-

tions, as well as honorific verb form, and we shall look at these later in this

chapter.

3.2.12 Causative: /

Causative constructions are, as their name implies, constructions which
indicate something was caused by someone. In English, this comes down
to statements such as ”I was made to do the dishes by my mom”, and in
Japanese, these constructions use the verbs (for verbs) and
(for verbs). These are paired, like / with the.
( ) follow the scheme:

bases