1.4. WORDS AND WORD CLASSES 35
1.4.6 Adjectives
As we saw in the section on nouns, any word that can be used to be ”more
specific” about a noun, is called an adjective. Words like ”big”, ”cold”,
”square” can all be used as adjectives to be much more specific about, for
instance, the noun ”box”:
”This is a box.”
”This is a square box.”
”This is a big, square box.”
”This is a big, cold, square box.”In Japanese, there are two types of adjectives, namely ”verbal” ad-
jectives and ”nominal” adjectives, the difference being that the first type
can – unlike in English – be inflected without relying on acopulaverb. In
English, we have to say ”The car was fast”, but in Japanese this ”was fast”
does not use a copula verb such as ’was’, but the adjective itself can convey
this meaning. In essence, in Japanese we get something akin to ”The car is
fast-in-past-tense”. The copula stays the way it is, but the adjective itself
changes, something which trips up many beginning students of Japanese.
Thenoun adjectives behave in the same way English adjectives do,
needing a copula to change. ”It was a square box” is the same in Japanese
as it is in English, with ”is” becoming ”was”, and the adjective staying the
way it is.
While we can use adjectives to be more specific about a noun, they
cannot be used to be more specific about a verb. As an example, in the next
two sentences the word ”fast” is used as an adjective in the first, but is used
as a different kind of word in the second sentence:
”This is a fast car.”
”I walked quite fast.”In the first sentence, the word ”fast” is used to be more specific
about the noun ”car”, but in the second sentence, the word ”fast” is used
to be more specific about the verb action ”walk”. While they look like the
same word, their use falls in different word classes. When used to be spe-
cific about a noun, a word is called an adjective. When used to be specific
about a verb, it’s called anadverb.
1.4.7 Adverbs
Using words to be specific about verbs and verb actions is called using
them adverbially. In fact, in that sentence the word ”adverbially” is an