2.6. MORE VERB GRAMMAR 85
2.5.5 Negative presence:
I know that is not a verb, but the reason it’s in this list is because of
, which is very much a verb. Since means ”exist” for inanimate
things, and since the adjective means ”not (exist)”, there are actually
(almost) always two interpretations possible when is used in a sen-
tence, by virtue of having two possible interpretations:
1) ”There is no radio.”
2) ”I do not have a radio.”So for this reason it has been included in the list of important verbs;
if we look at it as the negative form for , which we should, then it’s a
verb form, and a very important one at that.
2.6 More Verb Grammar
This covers the basics of verbal grammar. You should now be able to use
most verbs in plain preset affirmative and negative forms, as well as past
tense, and hopefully be interested enough to move on to the next chapter,
which will briefly recap the inflections covered in this chapter before mov-
ing on to the (rather extensive!) list of verbal inflections that are found in
Japanese.