2.1. INFLECTING 57
concepts involved without offering too much information at once, polite
verbal grammar will not be introduced until the next chapter, after basic
grammar has been covered.
Particles
Verbs and verbal adjectives are used in combination with a number of par-
ticles to explicitly mark parts of a sentence as relating to them. For verbs,
these are the particles , and , and for verbal adjectives this is just the
particle.
First off, (pronounced as ). This particle is used to mark a tran-
sitive verb’s direct object. This particle is fairly straight forward and does
what one expect from it given this explanation. In ”I eat an apple” the
noun ”apple” is thedirect objectfor the verb ”eat”, and in the correspond-
ing Japanese sentence,
, the word (’apple’) is the
direct object to the verb (’eat’). However, not everything that is
considered a direct object in Japanese is considered a direct object when
translated to English. For instance, in Japanese an aeroplane can ”fly the
air”, whereas in English aeroplanes just fly.
Second is , which broadly speaking marks verb details. Translat-
ing a sentence using to English yields the parts marked with as be-
coming indirect objects, prepositional phrases or even adverbs. Anything
that is ”not the verb actor, or the direct object”, but adds more details to the
verb action, will be marked with. For instance, the Japanese sentence
translates to the English sentence ”I bought
flowers for Mary”, with mapping to the word ’for’, which in English
indicates an indirect object. This is hardly its only ’meaning’; the Japanese
sentence
translates to ”I’ll be there at nine”, with mapping
to thepreposition’at’. Moreover, in the Japanese
, trans-
lating to the English ”To divide cleanly”, the marks the noun ,
”clean/neat/tidy”, as being used adverbially, ”neatly, cleanly”.
Finally, the particle is an interesting particle. When used with
verbal adjectives, it marks the thing the adjective applies to. For instance, in
the English sentence ”that car is fast”, the adjective ”fast” pertains to ”that
car”. Similarly, in the corresponding Japanese sentence
, the verbal adjective (’fast’) pertains to (’that car’). This con-
cept is carried over to verbs, too. Some verbs have what would in English
be considered a direct object, but in Japanese are not considered direct ob-