6.2. NOMINALISING 291
6.2.8 Stating an expectation using
In English, which is the language this book is wriĴen in, there are two
interpretations possible for ”should”: it can mean ”must” such as in ”you
should clean up your room”, and it can mean ”expect”, such as in ”she
should be showing up any minute now”. The nominaliser maps to this
expectating form of ”should”:
literally: ”It should be that everyone will come today.”
”Everyone should be coming today.”Here, the clause , ”everyone will come”, is turned into
the expectancy that everyone will come, using.
6.2.9 Stating a social expectation or custom using
Where is used to indicate the expecting ”should”, is used to indi-
cate the somewhat imperative ”should”. Now, this is a genuinely strange
word, unclassifiable using the modern Japanese word classes.
It comes from (with a form ), an overloaded classi-
cal verb with ”two” sets of conjugational bases; one for , and one for
the already at the time derived ’verb’ , itself a contracted version of
, the ” ” part of which itself stems from ...
classical classical modernnot usedIn modern Japanese, this word is so curious that there’s no real way
to describe it... is used as a noun, with its inflections being construc-
tions using copulae ( / ), but its negative adverbial form can still be
formed in the traditional + way, giving us. This word,
then, is actually a remnant of classical Japanese that defies modern word
classes, so we’re kind of left with exploring it as the need arises. In this
case, as the nominaliser , where it turns phrases in into a social