An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

2.1. INFLECTING 63

lowing:

”There is a book.”

”There is no book.”

The irregular adjective

In addition to these verbs, there is the irregular verbal adjective , ”good”,

which is actually the irregular verbal adjective :

base form

,

affirmative negative

plain + :

The only irregularity for this verbal adjective is its , which is
technically , but is almost always used as instead. Not knowing
these two are actually the same adjective can lead to confusion in more
complex inflections, such as when the adjective turns into the word
in it past tense.

The irregular adjective

Finally, there is the irregular verbal adjective : being the adjective for

negation, it has no real negative form itself. While technically we can fol-

low the negating + rule for it (forming the adjective ),

this is a double negation, and needs quite a bit of context before it makes

real sense.

For the remainder of this chapter, each inflection treated will sep-

arately list the inflections for , , , as well as and ,

where they differ from the standard inflection ”formula”.