An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

2.5. SPECIAL VERBS 83

respectively. To illustrate the difference between animate and inanimate,

let’s look at two sentences:

”(There) is a dog.”

”(There) is a book.”

In both sentences, marks the preceding part as subject of the sen-

tence. Both sentences translate to ”there is X”, but in the first sentence X is

a dog, which is an animate ’object’, and because of this, we need to use

. In the second sentence X is a book, which is rather inanimate, and thus
is used. Also, in both sentences, the word ”there” is entirely implied.
Because we are using verbs to mark existence and we are talking about ac-
tual instances of dogs and books; saying they exist means we also say they
exist at some location.
If, instead, we only want to define something, i.e. say something
”is” a thing, such as ”it is a dog” or ”it is a book”, we use a copula instead.
For most people used to western language, these verbs may at first glance
seem to do the same as what and do; after all, the sentence ”it is a
dog” is essentially the same as the sentence ”there is a dog” with the word
”there” replaced with ”it”. However, there is a very important difference:
in ”there is a dog”, we are saying that a dog exists somewhere, whereas in
”it is a dog”, we are defining some ”it” to be of the category ”dog”.
Put concisely, definitions in Japanese can only be done using copu-
lae, and marking existence can only be done using or :

”It is a dog.”

”It is a book.”

”Books are rectangular.”

”

”Dogs are animals.”