An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

2.1. INFLECTING 53

and verbal adjectives end on, bear in mind that just because verbs end on
–row syllables and verbal adjectives end on , not everything ending on
an –row syllable is a verb, and not everything ending on is a verbal
adjective – ”all cats have four legs, but not everything with four legs is a
cat”.
Let us look at how the bases for both verbs and the verbal adjectives
are formed. Looking at them as a combination of verbal stem and some
final syllable(s), the following table describes each of the bases for these
word classes:

Base

verbs

verbs verbal adjectives

stem (

) remove –row syllable remove remove

stem + –row syllable stem stem +

stem + –row syllable stem stem +

stem + –row syllable stem + stem +

stem + –row syllable stem + stem +

stem + –row syllable stem (+ / *) (stem + *)

In this table, the for the verbs and verbal adjectives are

starred, to indicate there’s something special about them. First, the

verb is a bit of a problem: the word can refer to either the

grammatical base form, or to the actual verb inflection as it is used in sen-

tences. In classical Japanese, both interpretations of the were ”stem

+ ”; the grammatical base form was the same as the final inflected form.

However, in modern Japanese the final inflected form is either ”stem + ”,

if you’re in an area that adheres to ’standard Japanese’ (the kind spoken in

Tokyo), or fairly uniformly ”stem + ”, if you’re not. This raises the prob-

lem that either the is listed as two separate forms – something I’m

not too fond of – or listing it as just the stem, and then telling you the final

inflected forms are either + or + depending on where

you are. In this book, I’ve taken the laĴer approach.

In addition to this, the verbal adjective is a point of con-

tention. In classical Japanese, verbal adjectives came in two types: ad-

jectives and adjectives. Both of these had a regular form, as well as a

form involving acontractionwith the verb , meaning ”to be”, forming

adjectives. Because of this, the and versions were ’pure’ adjec-

tives, in that they had noimperfectiveorcommandingform; for adjectives

those would make no sense. However, because of , the variants