6.2. NOMINALISING 293
6.2.11 Stating an intention using
Derived from the verb , ”to intend”, the nominaliser turns a
clause into an intention:
”(We) intend to go up to Wakayama today.”
In this sentence, the clause , translating to ”going
up to Wakayama”, is turned into an intention. Notice that this nominaliser
really only states intention. Planning, rather than intending, is indicated
using the noun
, ”plan”, instead. To indicate a negative intention,
generally the statement ”[I) don’t have the intention to ...” is used:
”If he has no intention to work hard, he will be fired.”
Literally, this sentence reads ”Should he have no intention to work
hard, it’ll be his head”. Aside from this nice reference to how being fired
was handled in the old days, it also shows how a negative intention is used.
6.2.12 Stating a meaning or situational explanation using
This nominaliser is somewhat interesting in that it’s next to impossible (or
often even neccesary) to translate, because it denotes situational commen-
tary. In English, we leave the situation outside our conversations, but in
Japanese you can use this word to indicate you are directly commenting
on the situation at hand, commenting in an explanatory or reasoning way
on it.
Typically a translation works just fine with it left untranslated, but
its presence in a Japanese sentence makes quite a difference in terms of
interpreting the sentence:
”(He) has not been proven guilty yet.””(it’s not as if he)’s been proven guilty yet.”
The first sentence states that some ”he” hasn’t been proven guilty
yet, as a factoid. The second sentence, however, states the same but does so