2.2. ADJECTIVES 69
inflecting ( )
affirmative negative
present theoretically, +
past + (c) theoretically, +’Theoretically’ is used here, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to
negate the adjective for negation itself. We’d end up with again.
2.2 Adjectives
We need to take a moment to examine verbal adjectives, and adjectives in
general, because they can do something verbs cannot do, and that’s to indi-
cate properties. With that, we get the added bonus that they let us compare
properties, allowing us to say something is red, redder than something
else, or the reddest thing we’ve ever seen. While in English these are three
distinct concepts, Japanese shows itself to be a sparse language yet again,
using the
for both the aĴributive as well ascomparativeforms:
A:
B:A: ”Fish like salmon and tuna’s goĴen expensive recently.”
B: ”So buy a cheaper fish.”Even though means ”cheap” when used as normal aĴributive,
it can also mean ”cheaper” when there is some context in which the prop-
erty ”cheap” contrasts to some other property ”expensive”. This goes for
all adjectives: there is no distinction between the aĴributive (normal adjec-
tive) and comparative (the English ”-er” form of adjectives) forms of ver-
bal adjectives in Japanese, similar to how there is no distinction between
present and immediate future tense for verbs in Japanese.
When we want to compare the same property, however, such as
comparing a cheap fish to an even cheaper fish, we can use to indi-