36 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
adverb, leĴing us be specific about the way in which ”using” is used. While
in English it can sometimes be confusing as to whether a word is being
used as an adjective or as an adverb, in Japanese this overlap is solved by
modifying both verbal and nominal adjectives so that they can be used as
adverbs instead, so that when you look at a sentence there is no way to
mistake whether it is used as adjective or adverb.
In addition to adjectives-turned-adverb, Japanese has words that
can be used only as adverbs. The most important of these are the quan-
tifiers, which include things like ”a lot”, ”not so much” and ”often”.
1.4.8 Particles
Japanese has an extra word class that isn’t found in western languages: the
particleclass. Words in this class fulfill a wide variety of roles: denoting
grammar explicitly, adding emphasis, disambiguating, marking how parts
of a sentence bear relation to each other, supplying reason, contradiction,
logical arguments, you name it – there is probably a particle that can be
used for it.
Most particles are suffixes, so that when you use a particle to indi-
cate for instance a contrast between two things, it gets added after the first
thing, rather than adding it in front like in English.
English: While X is the case, Y is also true.
Japanese: X is the case while, Y is also true.Within this word class, there is an important subclass known as the
counters. Like Chinese, but very much unlike most western languages,
counting in Japanese requires not just a knowledge of numbers, but also
of which particle to use in order to describe the category of things you are
counting. In the way you can ask for two mugs of beer or two glasses of
beer in English, you need to use thecounterfor ”mugs” or ”glasses” in
Japanese. However, while you can ask for ”two tea” in an English estab-
lishment, this kind of request is impossible in Japanese. You have to order
”two (units of) tea”, where the counter that you chose for your units makes
the difference between whether you’re asking for two cups or tea, two bags
of tea, or are accidentally asking for two sheets of tea.
1.4.9 Prefixes.
Some particles, as well as some common concept markers, areprefixes
rather thansuffixes– they are placed in front of words belonging to certain