Talk:Japanese grammar/Archive 3

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Push to FA

Let's get this article to featured article status. One year ago, after the previous failed FA nomination, I thought this article was 50% there. Not much seems to have changed from how I left it last year. What remains to be done? Many of the objections from the previous nomination don't seem irrelevant now. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri @ 09:29, July 9, 2006

Sorry

Shouldn't 生きる (ikiru, live) be iku? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 125.238.105.16 (talk) 20:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC).

Where and why? The modern verb ikiru derives from the Classical iku but what relevance does that have here? Could you bee more specific? --RJCraig 22:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
ikiru means "to live" in Modern Japanese, whereas iku is most commonly to go; though it has auxiliary uses as well, it is not equivalent to ikiru. --Se Cyning 17:59, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a question to ask...

correct me if wrong, the following sentence was used as an example: 

   "国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。"
   "kokkyō no nagai TONNERU o nukeru to yukiguni de atta"

and it was translated as: "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country."

however, it came directly from the translation of the yukiguni romance: 国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。夜の底が白くなった。信号所に汽車が止まった。 "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky. The train pulled up at a signal stop." (http://home.att.ne.jp/yellow/townsman/SnowCountry_1.htm)

i think the first sentence (the one used) was translated according the context and its use here may confuse new comers, just looking to learn the use of the particles. It took me a few minutes to confirm that there's no train and it belongs to a book.



Why is は romanized as "wa" in this article, shouldn't it be "ha"? I got confused as I read the article. Samusfan80 19:49, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Please read Hepburn romanization#Particles. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 11:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh I see, I guess I dont read romaji sentences often cause I think it's hard to understand romaji without any characters written beside it. Samusfan80 15:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

-kuru

Towards the end of this thread on a Sailormoon fandom board, there's discussion about the auxiliary verb "kuru". Can someone confirm this, please? Danny Lilithborne 07:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The table is not "wrong", but it is incomplete: the auxiliary kuru can have inceptive, perfective and conclusive uses. Compare:
戦争のために多くの人間が死んできた。
sensō no tame ni ōku no ningen ga shinde kita
Due to the war a lot of people have died (perfective)
雨が降ってきた。
ame ga futte kita
It started to rain. (inceptive)
時代が異なってきた。
jidai ga kotonatte kita
The times changed. (conclusive, i.e., the "come to V" sense mentioned in that thread)
It may be that the various senses of the auxliary depend on the kind of verb (punctual or continual) they are attached to, but I'm not sure. Will search for clues in Martin or Shibatani when I get a chance. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 08:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
On further reflection, what I termed "inceptive" above might more accurately be called the preterite tense. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 07:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Minor Mistake?

In this article, 連体詞 (prenomials) are listed under 付属詞 (ancillary words), whereas they are listed under 自体詞 (independent words) in the dictionaries 広辞苑　(koujien) and 大辞林 (daijirin), the encyclopedia 百科事典マイペディア (hyakkajiten maipedia), not to mention the Japanese version of Wikipedia. Anyone mind if I change this, or is there something I've missed? chunkyasparagus 11:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem with your suggested change. Be bold in updating pages. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 17:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this is also a minor error: "Additionally, by convention, the terminal form ありえる arieru is not used; it is always ありうる ariuru." This ignores colloquial usage, where arieru is fairly common. Even googling for the odd written form 有りえる gives 27 thousand hits (ありえる gives over a million, but there are many Ariels in that). It is true that it is by convention considered incorrect, but the unconventional usage is quite common nevertheless. I imagine this would be difficult to find a good citation for, as colloquial Japanese tends to be poorly documented. One survey about it seems to have been made, though, with the result of ありえる being slightly more common reading for あり得る than ありうる among Japanese 16 years or older at the beginning of 2004. [1] -- 130.233.24.129 07:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Kosoado

First, apologies for having "corrected" mesial to medial. I infer from googling that the former is used in linguistic as well as dental and anatomical contexts. However, I still don't have a full understanding of what it means -- perhaps because the version I have of Crystal's dictionary is greatly out of date, I don't have the Cambridge textbook on Person at hand now, and I don't know where to look.

A second reading of what the article says about kosoado gives me a better impression than the one I got yesterday, when I encountered the article for the first time and was happy with it until I reached that point. Anyway, the best description I found of this matter when I needed to investigate it a couple of years back was:

Hoji, Hajime, Satoshi Kinsui, Yukinori Takubo, and Ayumi Ueyama (2003) The demon­strat­ives in modern Japanese. In A. Li and A. Simpson, eds., Functional struc­ture(s), form and interpretation: perspectives from east Asian languages. London: Routledge. In PDF form, previously here (link now dead); now here.

It's not easy reading. (It's particularly difficult for me now, as it seems I don't have a suitable font installed in my newly and incompletely set up Kubuntu system: display is hideous and barely decipherable.) And the paper is most interesting about so, and the primary author writes here that The treatment of the deictic so-NPs in the paper is clearly not satisfactory, and I am currently working on it, based on the presentations at ATR and Nanzan at the end of 2000.

Perhaps there is now something better. -- Hoary 07:04, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but the page is too complicated

Please make it more simple.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.134.168.217 (talk • contribs) .

Japanese grammar is complicated. Do you have any particular area which you think should be improved? Mlewan 08:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what anon is objecting to, but I have proposed in the past that this article be moved to wikibooks and only a brief summary left in wikipedia. Currently it reads like a pedantic grammar textbook than an approachable encyclopedia article. In fact, it doesn't give anything resembling a historical perspective on the subject of "Japanese grammar". Fixing this has long been on my list of things to do when I can find a bit of free time. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:50, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing that the reason he/she is confused is because the article uses terminology that the average person doesn't understand (Diplithongs? Auxillary verbs? Even I can't make heads or tails of this). Maybe we should try bringing the Simple English version of this article up to speed so people who only have a basic vocabulary can grasp the concepts presented within. We could also try cleaning up all those confising words by replacing them with terms that the average person can understand. How about it? --Toastr 06:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I assume that was mostly sarcasm. But the article could use some major reorganization to conform it to the style of articles for other languages. My biggest problem with it is that it relies too heavily on the traditional Japanese 国語 analysis. (For example, are there any other language articles where the information is organized according to a conjugable/non-conjugable distinction? Why not include this sort of information under a traditional grammar article?) There is a lot of repetition across pages that could be removed, and most of the "conjugation" information should be moved to Japanese verb conjugations and other articles, with only a few representative examples here. Just my two-yen's worth. --RJCraig 07:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, these comments frighten me. The Japanese grammar article is one of the best and most exhaustive language articles we currently have at Wikipedia. If you try to "simplify" it and make it "understandable" there is a very high risk that you a) remove vital information, b) make it incomprehensible to people with basic knowledge of the language.
You cannot describe Japanese grammar in a sensible way using a European grammar template. They have past tense of adjectives. They have no future verb forms. They have no definite articles. They have no subjunctive. They do not conjugate verbs according to person (I am, you are, he is...). They have loads of particles and politeness forms. They have special verb and adjective forms to express negation and ability. They have no grammatical gender. Their grammar is different from European languages, and it is not beneficial to describe it as a European language.
Besides, there already is a summary grammar at Japanese language, which can be read by people with no previous knowledge.
Of course this article can be improved and made clearer, just like any other article. However, the big hurdle is not the structure of the article but that complexity of the Japanese language. Mlewan 09:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
One more thing, not only is this one of the best grammar articles on Wikipedia, it is also probably the clearest Japanese grammar I have managed to find anywhere - both in paper form and on the net. Mlewan 09:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words. As I am to blame for the current article's organisation and nearly all of its current text (though, of course, with zillions of corrections from everyone else), I am glad you think so highly of it. Realistically, however, I continue to think that this article is nigh useless for a layperson—the intended audience for an encyclopedia—because it requires at least a passing familiarity with the language. In addition, the topic selection and concentration is esoteric and haphazard. Many elements of the page (reflexive pronouns, conjugation forms, the wa/ga issue, auxilliary verbs, onbin) are far too detailed, and other necessary elements (predicate formation, aspect and mood, register, elision, aizuchi) are not covered at all. Now, rewriting this page in the mold of, for eg., French grammar, would be a travesty, and not just because Japanese isn't an Indo-European language— I do take it as a matter of pride that Japanese grammar was probably the first and certainly is the most detailed grammar-related article on Wikiedia. I think we should start by taking another look at the comments in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/Index/July 2004#Japanese grammar, particularly the last one by ww. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 12:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Just to make sure we're clear on the issues: As I hope was indicated by my mention of sarcasm above, I'm against any dumbing down of the grammatical terminology. Surely no one would suggest that we discuss nuclear physics and not use the proper vocabularly! :)
I'm also not saying that Japanese grammar is not complex, or suggesting that we try to make it fit perfectly into a "European template". But I do believe that using the traditional analysis as a basis for structuring the article makes the language seem more exotic than is called for. Yes, Japanese adjectives "conjugate" like the verbs, and the verbs do not show agreement with their subjects in the same way as European languages, etc. I fail, however, to see the benefit in emphasizing the differences at the expense of the similarities.
The traditional grammatical analysis also makes distinctions which do not exist. There is no point in distinguishing the terminal and attributive forms in Modern Japanese, nor in separating the vowel-stem (ichidan) verbs into two classes—there is no difference in the endings. Dividing the consonant-stem verbs according to the orthography (tuka.wa, ka.ka) obscures the regularity that can be seen in the forms. The continuative form of adjectives is really an adverb: the -ku suffix is a derivational morpheme akin to—but more productive than—English -ly. Etc etc. Don't get me wrong, the traditional analysis is brilliant as far as it goes. I just don't think it's the best way to present the structure of the language. (Btw, this isn't some sort of rejection of modern linguistic analysis as a form of Western imperialism sort of thing, is it?) --RJCraig 12:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
As far as kokugo bias is concerned, I really don't see it. Explaining conjugation using the conjugation forms from kokugu is a perfect, almost mechanical fit. (In fact, Japanese conjugation is easily fully mechanizable.) As far as your latter point is concerned, there certainly are differences between shuushikei and rentaikei for adjectives. The division in the conjugation uses a period at the end of the stem form, which, far from obscuring the regularity, illuminates it. The notion of "adverb" is Western imperialism trying to impose itself on Japanese grammar; a traditionalist would say that the ren'youkei has an adverbial role, but it is still the ren'youkei of an adjective. Who is "right"? — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 12:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Well...there's certainly no point in arguing with that, is there? --RJCraig 00:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the page is too complicated, but I think it can be simplified by addition, not subtraction. I've been referring to this page for some time, and the thing that most makes it difficult to comprehend is the lack of interlinear glosses. I don't know Japanese, so if there's a sentence with six or seven words, I can't match them up one-to-one with the English translation. I would add glosses myself, but, as I said, I don't know Japanese. Can someone who knows Japanese (and glossing rules) please add interlinear glosses to this article? I think it might solve most of the problems mentioned in this section of the talk page. 76.167.253.199 (talk) 10:59, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Pro-sentence

Could someone please check out Pro-sentence? It is a grammar article. In the same way that pronouns like "it" can replace nouns like "the cat", pro-sentences, such as "no" can replace/rebut a sentence. I just mentioned the Japanese tendency there where the answer "Yes" to "Aren't you hungry" means, "Yes, I am not hungry". As I am not proficient in Japanese, I was wondering if someone could please touch up my edit. Thanks samwaltz 03:59, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Glosses for Mathias egs under "Pronouns"

Shouldn't the parts in parentheses refer to kare no and kare (ni) rather than his and him?

Just wondering if this might not confuse someone...?? --RJCraig 08:37, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Nouns and other deictics section: non-inflecting

Maybe this is just niggling, but the way this

Japanese nouns are non-inflecting: they have neither gender nor number.

is currently phrased seems a bit confused to me. Grammatical gender plays no role in Japanese grammar. Japanese nouns do not change form to indicate grammatical role, gender, etc. The two concepts interact, but they're basically independent. That is not at all clear from the above.

Also..."article-free"? Are articles suddenly a bad thing now? --RJCraig 08:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Preferable? — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
In that it seems less likely to mislead the uninformed (or make it appear that the editors here are confused), yes, I think the new is preferable to the earlier version. It was a small point, but thanks for changing it. --RJCraig 09:28, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Another question: Shouldn't some mention be made here of animacy and its role in verb selection? E.g., hon ga aru vs. hito ga iru. --RJCraig 16:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain that animacy is either irrelevant or very weakly relevant in Japanese. Aru/oru is the only pair that comes to mind. Google searching reveals nothing, and Shibatani and Kuno (the first two places I check for anything regarding Japanese linguistics) are silent about it. There are some recent papers on animacy in Japanese, but the strongest conclusion any of them seem to draw is that animacy may have a role in passivization. If you have a reference for animacy in Japanese, I would be curious to read it. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 16:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
More worryingly, sci.lang.japan is silent about it, though I'll gladly volunteer to pose the question there. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 16:59, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
The distinction between aru/iru(oru) (when used as main verbs, not auxiliaries) is precisely what I was thinking of, as should be evident from the examples I used. If something which affects every noun in the language (and which is mentioned in every elementary textbook for non-native learners) is irrelevant, then there is no need to mention it here. 人生は色々。人の考えも。 --RJCraig 17:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
There is, however, a difference between calling it grammatical animacy and simply pointing out the usage pattern for aru/oru. Recall, in fact, that aru was classically allowed to be used for humans also, and this usage survives at least idiomatically. Animacy is generally used to mean something much deeper; for instance, in English it manifests as a choice of pronouns: "that is the person who" vs. "that is the object that". In any case, I would first like to read a source that claims that Japanese nouns mark animacy before I would agree that it belongs in the article. Offline references are fine: I have access to a fairly large number of journals, or I can just ask the author of the papers. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 19:28, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
  1. If you don't want to admit animacy as a feature of Japanese nouns, how then do you account for the difference in the usage of aru/iru? Or the marked ("not generally accepted as standard") nature of the use of the "collectivizing suffixes" with inanimates? Semantic restrictions? If so, how is that not relevant in an article on grammar? It has an effect on the form of acceptable sentences in the language, even if there is no overt marking on the nouns per se.
  2. Could you explain how the English who/which/that distinction is "deeper" than the aru/iru one?
  3. Finally, do you make a distinction between synchronic and diachronic analyses? Previous stages of a language are interesting and tell us how the current one came to be, but you can't automatically assume that aspects of those past stages are still relevant. Classical ari made no distinction as to animacy but modern aru does. I fail to see the point. (Also, could you provide an example of this surviving idiomatic use of aru you mention? Because I'm drawing a blank at the moment and none of the native speakers I have asked can come up with anything either.) --RJCraig 03:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Look, it's not a matter of whether I admit something or not. If you want to add something to Wikipedia, you have to source it to some published work. We have had lots of problems with people trying to add their pet theories about Japanese to this article in the past, but original viewpoints should not be published in Wikipedia. So, once again, give me a published reference or two that supports your claims. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 07:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, but I didn't need a reminder of WP policy at this juncture. I haven't added any of this to the main article but instead am asking why a particular fact has been omitted. Discussing the content, in accordance with proper procedure. And I do believe that there is a question of what you are willing to admit here, since to me the article currently reads simply as a re-presentation in English of the 国語学・学校文法 framework which—while brilliant in its own terms—has some serious flaws when considered from the POV of modern linguistic analysis. But we've already disagreed on 「青い目で見た日本文法」so I'll just let it go. (You might consider renaming the page "Traditional Japanese grammar" or something similar, though.)
I also suspect that you will not be satisfied by anything less than a reference that clearly states "animacy is a feature of Japanese nouns". I don't have such a reference at the moment. But I will point out this, from the article bibliography:
  • Martin (1975), the beginning of "Ch. 3 Expansion constraints; noun subcategorization", where he establishes "classes of nouns...on the basis of a kind of 'pronominal' substitution" (in other words, grammatical factors); specifically, classes (2) HUMAN nouns, (3a) NONHUMAN ANIMATE nouns, and (3b) SELF-PROPELLING nonhuman nouns. (In connection with the last and noun classifier selection, note this from an abstract here.
Next, we discuss on some recent examples which come between animate/inanimate categories, such as "robot dogs" (AIBOTM)". Robot dogs, first marketed in June 1999, have been used with various types of classifiers. In the first stage, they were counted with "-dai", which is for classifying mechanic objects. Then gradually, some articles started adopting animate classifiers "-hiki" and "-tou" to emphasize the high degree of animacy of robot dogs. In the latest stage, they are counted with the classifier "-ko", one of the most unmarked classifiers for counting objects.
  • And this, from the cooccurrence relation entry in 『新言語学辞典』(研究社): 統語論に例をとるならば、(1)｢そこに彼がいる」は正常な文であるが、(2)＊「そこに学校がいる」は正常な文ではない。したがって、「彼」と「いる」は共起関係をもつが、「学校」と「いる」は共起関係をもたない。この現象は、動詞「いる」は有生(animate)名詞を主語にとることができるが、非有生(inanimate)名詞を主語にとろことができないという一般的原則によるものである。そこで、この観点から、上の共起関係を動詞「いる」のもつ主語選択上の制限として捕えることができる。
The above in addition to the fact that googling "Japanese nouns animacy" results in just under 23,000 hits suggest that I'm not alone in seeing a relationship here. When I find something I believe will satisfy you, I'll let you know. --RJCraig 13:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, my volume of Martin was too bulky to carry to Europe, or I would have looked there also. I learn new things every time I open that book. As far as modern grammars go, however, Martin's grammar tends to be rather eccentric, don't you think? There certainly doesn't appear to be any mention of animacy in Shibatani's work, which I consider to be a tour de force of constructive grammar in the grand MIT tradition. I did do a bunch of googling and was not convinced that that the claim that Japanese marks grammatical animacy for nouns was supported. There is, of course, nothing surprising about being able to classify nouns into animate and inanimate classes: the question is whether this is reified in the grammar. I'll try and track down Iida's paper -- thanks for the reference. I would have no objection to---in fact would encourage---a proper treatment of counters in this article, including the above features. You might note that the article already mentions some aspects of this feature, such as the general impossibility of attaching -tachi to inanimates. My understanding of grammatical animacy is that it affects all verbs. But I'm not a professional linguist. How does Crystal define animacy? (Another book that I didn't bring with me, unfortunately.)
Do you have a concrete proposal for updating this section? Why not just update it, and we can continue here if I don't like it? — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 14:42, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Martin is a bit of a hawg, ain't it? :) (I shipped mine when it became apparent I was here for the long haul.) I agree about the "eccentricity" as well. I also agree that this is not as clear-cut an example of grammatical animacy as can be found in some other languages; in Japanese it surfaces as a cooccurrence restriction on lexical selection, not in some overt change in word order (as in the Navajo example under animacy).
Let me think about how I would incorporate mention and get back to you. --RJCraig 23:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
With "general impossibility of attaching -tachi to inanimates", I guess you mean this part of the article: "Tachi is sometimes applied to inanimate objects, 車 (kuruma, car) and 車達 (kuruma-tachi, cars), for example, but this usage is not generally accepted as standard." As there are hundreds of thousands of hits on Japanese pages for 車たち/車達 (of which all are not read くるまたち, but are close enough anyway), it might be useful to replace "not generally accepted as standard" with something more specific. お星さま and 星たち are hardly rare either (Google is of little use with 星たち because of metaphors though), and 広末涼子's song 「真冬の星座たちに守られて」 would also be an example of this use of たち. Does "not standard" try to convey something beyond the usage being colloquial? Something about anthropomorphization, childlikeness and rarity of combination with most words? I think that there are many Japanese words with one or more of these characteristics, would they also be non-standard? As a reader who is not familiar with たち would probably take "non-standard" to imply rarity, maybe it would be an improvement to state that it is common for some words? -- 130.233.24.129 05:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
There's a commercial for one of those vibrating weight-loss belts that's been playing lately in which a young woman trying one out exclaims「柔らかいお肉たちが震えてる！」It's cute, it's colloquial, it no doubt involves both anthropomorphization and spur-of-the-moment linguistic creativity. But it's not "standard" in any sense of the word. It could of course become popular if enough people see the commercial and, like me, find it amusing enough to repeat and use themselves. Maybe a note about some common exceptions? (Still thinking about the other, btw.) --RJCraig 06:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
広辞苑 says that いる/ある is differentiated in modern Japanese by using いる for things that one conceives of as moving and ある for those one does not. As was mentioned, いる can be used of "self-propelling nonhuman nouns" (such as trains). Additionally, ある is sometimes used of people, one case of which is often given in elementary Japanese courses[2][3], e.g. 妻子ある人. Googling "人もある" (368 thousand hits) gives many examples of a more common usage, and there's also an Asahi article with the title 「寄席をヨリセキって読む人、あるのかね」[4]. Similarly for "人はない". There's also the proverb「渡る世間に鬼はない」. -- 130.233.24.129 09:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I am sure perceptions figure into the usage, but I remain dubious that it is as simple as perceptions of moving. I have never encountered iru used with kuruma, hikouki, uchuusen, etc. I don't think I have seen iru used with densha either, come to think of it. Far be it from me to question the venerable Koujien, though. Thanks for that last sentenced; it triggered a dormant memory of dozens of places where I have seen [ANIMATE] wa nai, such as in kami wa nai (13K ghits). I am almost tempted to guess here that aru is more flexible than iru, the latter being limited to mostly animates (though, of course, the continuative -te iru can be used of inanimates also). — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Again, I think we have to be careful to distinguish fixed expressions (as in set phrases and proverbs) and conscious imitation of older forms, which will naturally reflect the non-animate/inanimate-sensitive usage of old ari. 「人もある」may get 368K Ghits, but 「人もいる」gets ~4.5 times as many (1,660K). Interesting—language change in action? Maybe we're seeing the beginning of the loss of the distinction?—but not yet something citable that can be added to the article. --RJCraig 10:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Topic-Prominent or Non-Topic-Prominent?

Japanese language is said to be a topic-prominent language in the articles Japanese language and Topic-prominent language, but this is not the case in this article Japanese grammar, in which "Japanese is neither topic-prominent, nor subject-prominent..." is stated. Could someone please try to accord the contradictive statements in the different articles?--Bellenion 14:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Miscellaneous thoughts

Disparate thoughts written when I should have already gone to bed:

  • 日本語文法 written at the top may be pretty but it doesn't explain anything.
  • Phrases have a single meaning-bearing word, followed by a string of suffixes, auxiliary verbs and particles to modify its meaning and designate its grammatical role. Aren't 大きなたんす and 高い鼻 examples of noun phrases? Each has a noun preceded by something akin to an adjective.
    • bunsetsu ja:文節 and ku (phrase / ja:句) are different thing so using "phrase" as a translation of "bunsetsu" causes confusion. "大きなたんす" is a noun phrase 名詞句, which is constructed from two bunsetsu, "大きな" and "たんす". --Kusunose 07:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The discussion of the wa/ga difference assumes that it's the matrix clause that's being discussed. For a subordinate clause, wa won't work.
  • This further differentiates daimeishi from pronouns, which cannot change their person. Actually they can. In English, for example, "we" has a second-person use. ("Got a bit of a sore throat, have we?") And hasn't there been a change in Spanish?
  • The ko- (proximal) series refers to things closer to the speaker than the hearer, the so- (mesial) series for things closer to the hearer, and the a- (distal) series for things distant to both the speaker and the hearer. Right on the first and third, wrong on the second. Or do this article's editors' native (L1J) informants confirm that so- is "closer to the hearer"? Does any recent linguistics book (not L2 Japanese teaching book) confirm it? To me, it looks like a recycling of myths dating back to the 19th century.
  • Adverbs in Japanese are not as tightly integrated into the morphology as in many other languages. Does this perhaps mean "Adverbs in Japanese are not as morphologically distinctive as they are in many other languages"?
  • Topic, theme, and subject: は (wa) and が (ga): This section again doesn't seem to distinguish between matrix and subordinate clauses.
  • The discussion of particles doesn't seem to distinguish between case-markers and other postpositions. (Hint: which of them can be combined? では, yes; but はで? がは? Er, no.)

Er, that's enough for now. -- Hoary 15:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

僕はうなぎだ -- deferred reference?

A common linguistic joke shows the insufficiency of rote translation with the sentence 僕は鰻だ (boku wa unagi da), which per the pattern would translate as "(Speaking of me), I am an eel." Yet, in a restaurant this sentence can reasonably be used to say "I'd like an order of eel", with no intended humor. This is because the sentence should be literally read, "As for me, it is an eel," with "it" referring to the speaker's order. The topic of the sentence is clearly not its subject. This is an example of deferred reference, a linguistic feature much more pervasive in Japanese than in English.

I think the last couple of sentences here are directly contradictory: "As for me, it is an eel" is not deferred reference (going by the definition on that page); only actually saying "I am an eel" would be deferred reference. So it looks like this paragraph is saying that the sentence does not mean "I am an eel" (not even if taken literally), and then it turns around and says it is. What do you think? - furrykef (Talk at me) 04:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Polite pronouns for he/she, plural forms

Shouldn't the あの人, その人 / あの方 その方 be included as the polite forms of he/she (combined) and the plural forms are missing (suffixes 達 (たち), 方 (がた) and ら). One can make an assumption that the polite he/she is missing completely. These words may not be considered as pronouns, though, but "this/that person". --Atitarev (talk) 22:03, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Subordinate and Relative Clauses

Does anyone else think that it would be useful to add a section on Japanese subordinate clauses, maybe even clause-related grammar as a whole? I know that this is an encyclopedia and not really a learner's guide, but I think that would be important to mention how Japanese sentences are constructed. I noticed that the article doesn't really cover subordinate and relative clause formation, so I thought that that would be useful here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Se Cyning (talk • contribs) 02:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Theoretical errors addressed in early March 2009

I made edits about eight hours ago. "Topic" and "subject" were considered mutually exclusive. There was a heading, "Nouns and other deictics" — nouns as such are not deictics; see Deixis. Large misunderstandings like these drag down the reputation of Wikipedia.

The article sometimes reads like it was translated, awkwardly so. Dale Chock (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Section on copula だ

This section seems to indicate that だ is the same as です which is contradicted in this source under the section 「です」 is NOT the same as 「だ」. AngelFire3423 (talk) 14:24, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to this page. What the author is trying to convey is that you cannot simply replace だ with です　in any situation to make it polite, which is a common misconception. Thus it is true that they are not functionally gammatically equal, but this section doesn't imply that; it simply states that です is the　polite terminal form of だ, which is true. Now, it doesn't explain that you cannot use the polite terminal copula in all the same places as you can the base copula, but it doesn't explain a whole lot of other rules and restrictions regarding all the other conjugations of it either; the goal of the table is to simply present the basic conjugations without going into massive detail as to their usage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ulrezaj (talk • contribs) 16:04, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
It should also be noted that Tae Kim's guide is geared towards teaching Japanese as a foreign language, not merely describing its grammar. For a language learner, it might be more useful to think of だ and です as entirely different (although I don't completely agree, myself). But if you just want to understand the grammatical ideas, not actually learn to speak the language, then it may be more useful to see them as different forms of the same word. Also, Tae Kim is not a linguist, so I wouldn't consider his guide to be reliable as a reference work (which is a different question from whether it's good as a guide to learn Japanese from!). - furrykef (Talk at me) 13:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Japanese grammar/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This review might take a bit, and I'll only paste it to the talk page when I'm done with it.

General points

1. Well-written: The article seems to contain several unconventional formulations up to mistakes in English grammar. But I’m not a native speaker and not really able to fix this matter. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take too much work to fix this point.
2. Factually accurate and verifiable: The article is predominantly factually accurate (see below), but several points can only be verified by an expert with some knowledge of literature on Japanese grammar. Thus, in-line referencing is totally inadequate.
3. Broad in its coverage: The article is very formalist and neglects function to some degree. For example, double accusatives or phrase order are not discussed.
4. Neutral: The article heavily leans towards traditional Japanese grammar. Given that modern linguistics is the most advanced (and hopefully, objective) research tradition, this is clearly non-neutral.
5. Stable: Yes.
6. illustrated, if possible, by images: I don't know whether it would be possible, but it is certainly not necessary.

Specific points

Lead

is too short.

Word order: head final and left branching

  • Requires a general reference that introduces some typological infos on Japanese. Alternatively, any grammar may be used, but then we might possibly need some English grammar as well.
  • “usually attributed to Joseph Greenberg” is not as innocent-looking as it might be perceived and would certainly require a source of its own.
  • The framework of this section is that of a phrase-structure grammar, that is, it is not theory-independent.

Unusual word class system

  • This is an oversimplification of a continuum of nominal modifiers, eg ookii vs. ookina that is not member of two classes, but just intermediate. A semantic analysis for this has been attempted (quoted somewhere in Croft’s Radical construction grammar) and should be quoted if it is not refuted elsewhere. If refuted, it might still be quoted in a footnote.
  • It is of course possible to retain the original analysis given in this section, but as it is certainly not uncontroversial, it should be neatly quoted.
  • It is a quite encompassing claim that ALL loans from Chinese are at least verbal nouns. I'd expect that there might be a test X suru vs. *X suru, but that would require virtually every Chinese noun to allow for X suru - and I would indeed check a source that is claimed to make such a claim.
  • The analogy of verbal nouns to gerunds is ridiculous. There should be some better attempt to illustrate this category.

Japanese as a topic-prominent language

  • This chapter doesn’t address its issue. It merely gives a very short explanation what topic-prominence might be, but not inhowfar Japanese gives prominence to topics (ie vs. subjects).
  • Some general literature on topicality should be included into the (as of now) non-existent in-line references.

Liberal omission of the subject of a sentence

  • This info is misleading. First, only because English is exceptional in its vast usage of personal pronouns, this doesn’t make the rampant phenomenon notable that overt personal pronouns can usually be dropped in many of the world’s languages. Second, the prominence of topic in Japanese seems just to contradict this statement. If the language is topic-prominent, why do we frequently drop the topics? Of course, if we’d discuss sentences of the structure tree wa leaf ga green, a peculiarity of Japanese would become clear. One might also address this issue by giving an example of ni wa.

Sentences, phrases and words

  • “Usually, however, grammarians adopt a more conventional concept of word (単語 tango), one which invokes meaning and sentence structure.” What is meant by the last clause here?
  • For the most part of this section, a single reference might do. Only statements such as “Some scholars” need slightly better referencing.

Word classification

  • If we venture to discuss traditional Japanese grammar, it has to be placed into some non-western (or older western) grammar tradition to be understandable.

Nouns

  • „(boku, a word for 'I' which discussions of the language unfailingly cite, actually is a word that is only used in informal situations among adolescent boys)“. One must be exceedingly careful with such generalizations as the people stating them may hold some kind of language attitude themselves. Thus, we either need some kind of consensus (including statements in monolingual dictionaries) or a study that indeed surveyed the distribution of this item.
  • „but this usage is colloquial and indicates a high level of anthropomorphisation and childlikeness, and is not more generally accepted as standard.” Dito. Either colloquial or childish, that’s not the same at all. Or either, but then you cannot write “colloquial and indicates”.
  • A general observation: Vowel length must be included in transcriptions.

Conjugable words

  • One should discuss why assuming forms like mizenkei etc. (that apparently follow grammar tradition and kana writing) is superior to an analysis that poses -(a)nai – if this is the case. If not (and the presence of renkaikei next to shuushikei points in that direction), such an analysis might at best be given as traditional and then be refuted. (Basically, the distribution of verb suffixes would correspond to consonantal and vowel stem verbs.)
  • “Continual verbs” – very rare terminology. Should be replaced by “activity verbs” or something like that. Anyway, a reference would certainly have its merits here. “Punctual verbs … indicate … a continuing state after some action.” Another funny thing. Punctual verbs are the other way round, possibly including the pre-phase of an action, but not the subsequent state after a result. I know this isn’t Vendlerian, but even general linguistics in the US has (sometimes) progressed further than that now. Difficult to make a good suggestion, but in the terminology of Walter Breu we would probably be talking about an “inceptive state” in case of sir-. Consequently, ut- and sir- don’t belong to the same class of verbs.
  • The semantic categorization of the verbs itself is not transparent. Some of it is according to their aktionsart, some of it not. If aktionsart is the main criterion, the other criteria should probably establish subclassifications to the aktionsart analysis.
  • “keiyōshi … and are semantically and morphologically similar to stative verbs.” If keiyoushi are morphologically more similar to stative verbs than to, eg, movement verbs, this should be explained somewhere.
  • “In continuative conjugations, では (de wa) is often contracted in speech to じゃ (ja)”. If I remember correctly, this is a myth, ja being a loan from western Japanese varieties. Someone should cross-check this with competent dialectological work. (Naturally, school grammarians cannot be trusted on this point.)

Other independent words

  • mi-ni iku is not an instance of an adverbial in the traditional form, as mi- is controlled by iku. It is ad-verbial all right, but that is irrelevant here. So, are there FREE uses of mi-ni etc.?
  • Do we have conjunctions that are limited to absolute clause-initial position? This would merit mentioning. I would also tend to mention “node” etc. in this context because of its functional similarity.

Ancillary words

  • wa „replaces“ ga AND o, so it might merit to include o into the general discussion as well. (A minor point as the literature often doesn’t take this approach as well. Yet, if we enter any discussion on grammatical relations, this becomes highly relevant.)
  • “Unlike wa, the subject particle ga nominates its referent as the sole satisfier of the predicate.” Given the general literature on focus, such a statement is likely to be very controversial (ie it is partisan within this discussion). Such a claim needs several sources, and some among them should be more recent.
  • boku ga unagi da is amazing, as it seems to show that ga basically indicates focus and not at all subjecthood.
  • “For stative transitive verbs, ga instead of o is typically used to mark the object.” I’d not expect that this holds for all transitive stative predications. (I don’t have at hand the relevant literature, though.) On the other hand, this matter is intrinsically related to the potential forms of verbs that MAY take ga or o, dekiru as the potential verb par excellence being limited to ga.
  • de and ni should be contrasted to each other, otherwise you cannot differentiate some particular uses that seem to be overlapping.
  • mo and wa may contrast, so they should also be treated together.
  • koto (and maybe mono) can (and possibly should) be understood as complementizers akin to to. Not mentioning them at all in all of this article is not feasible.
  • “auxiliary verbs … differ from normal verbs in having no independent meaning”. Might it be more appropriate to state that auxiliaries and the verbs they control jointly only denote one action and thus constitute complex, but never secondary predications?
  • Those so-called “pure” auxiliaries seem to be nothing but suffixes. It would need a lot of justification to treat them as auxiliaries. We don’t deal with diachronics here, and neither with Japanese grammar tradition.

FA

The points I discussed so far were related to immediate problems of the article, but there is one point that I would like to mention that might only become relevant if the article was ever to become Featured article candidate. While it is of course appropriate to give very short overall descriptions in a Wikipedia article on grammar, a selected bibliography on each topic that would provide the most relevant and the most recent literature (so that most other relevant texts could be found in the bibliography of the cited works) would be superb und greatly enhance the usefulness of wikipedia for actual linguists.

Conclusion

As it is now, this article doesn't meet Good article requirements. By favouring Japanese traditional grammar, it is non-neutral, and it doesn't have in-line citations even for some potentially controversial statements. It has multiple smaller issues that I tried to indicate in the specifics section. (I'd expect that some of the more specific points I made may be subject to discussiion (which might prove insightful, should it happen to arise), but that doesn't amend the point that the article should be more neatly researched. In the end, the article is about Japanese grammar, most likely the best-described non-Indo-Germanic grammar of the world. This article should somehow reflect this profound research tradition.)

G Purevdorj (talk) 10:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

As there has been no reaction within a week, I close this GAR by demoting the article. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yet another form of adjective

In the section of "Adjectives", only two forms out of three I believe are listed, namely '-i' and '-na' type. Yet there is definitely in modern Japanese language another form of adjective, which, though typically classified into the category of "形容動詞"(as with '-na type'), features some very different conjugation from that of '-na' type adjectives. These words are also called taru-to type (たる・と形容動詞) adjectives. Fro example, 堂々たる（meaning roughly 'aboveboard'）should fall into this category. When used in its adjective form decorating noun, it follows as aforementioned form, ending with たる(-taru). While used as an adverb, you speak "堂々と + verb". That is, with 堂々 being the root, it conjugates between たる(taru) and と(to), not な(na) and に(ni).

Some deeper study may be needed to perfect its conjugation rules, of which I know only a little as said above.--Nrgbooster (talk) 11:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

  • The -taru adjective class is very limited in the modern language, and it has been a closed class for longer.
Broadly speaking, the modern -na adjectives and the obsolescent -taru adjectives share a heritage -- both were formed as [NOUN]-ish root word + [COPULA FORM] + あり (basic verb meaning “to be”). Research by Bjarne Frellesvig and others suggests that there were two kinds of copula in the ancient language, one based on a T stem and another on an N stem. The T stem persists as modern particle と, while the N stem persists as modern particle に and in modern verb なる (“to become”). The -taru adjectives formed as:
  • [NOUN] + と in the adverbial form
  • [NOUN] + と + ある in the attributive (modifying a noun) form, contracting to [NOUN]たる
  • [NOUN] + と + あり in the terminal (sentence-final) form, contracting to [NOUN]たり
Similarly for the classical -nari adjectives:
  • [NOUN] + に in the adverbial form
  • [NOUN] + に + ある in the attributive (modifying a noun) form, contracting to [NOUN]なる
  • [NOUN] + に + あり in the terminal (sentence-final) form, contracting to [NOUN]なり
As the classical verb あり changed into modern ある, so too did the terminal forms shift from ending in -ari to ending in -aru. The -naru adjectives also shortened to just -na, likely just normal erosion from regular use.
Interestingly, the way that modern -i adjectives "conjugate" like verbs is also entirely because of fusion with the actual verb あり. At the rawest forms, -i adjectives used to be -ki adjectives, and they only had three basic forms:
  • ending in -shi in the terminal form (this has been replaced with the modern attributive ending -i)
  • ending in -ku in the adverbial form
  • ending in -ki in the attributive form
(Things were a little more complicated, with adjectives that end in -shii in modern Japanese having slightly different patterns, but the above still holds true.)
All of the other conjugations -- past tense -atta, presumptive -arō, imperative -are, etc. -- were all formed by contraction with あり. Some examples with 暑い (atsui, “hot”):
  • Past tense: 暑かった == 暑く + あった
  • Presumptive: 暑かろう == 暑く + あろう
  • Hypothetical: 暑けれ == 暑く + あれ, with the vowel influenced by けれ (from older fusion of past recollective き + あれ -- see also wikt:けれども)
  • Imperative: 暑かれ == 暑く + あれ
So we have three basic types of adjectives, with the -taru adjectives the least common and the most old-fashioned. It also bears noting that many terms classed as -na adjectives in dictionaries may be used more commonly with the particle の instead, such as 本当 (hontō, “real, true”), as in 本当の話 (hontō no hanashi, “a real story, a true tale”).
HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 01:48, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Are verbs really a closed class?

About this part in the article:

Japanese morphology has a feature which is highly unusual cross-linguistically: the two classes of verb and adjective are closed classes, meaning they do not accept new members.

While most new verbs are formed with する, how about verbs like ググる and スタバる? The source is from 1998, Starbucks started their first café in Japan 1996, and Google obviosly after that, so these two particular verbs likely didn't exist at that time. Is this a recent phenomenon?

I cannot think of any counter-examples to adjectives, though.

62.20.182.115 (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll delete that claim. Not only is it false in the case of Japanese (another example is Wる daburu "to double"), but the Japanese situation is not at all unusual: many many languages only borrow nouns, and need to secondarily verbify them as Japanese does with suru. kwami (talk) 19:56, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
This may have increased recently and be consciously breaking a rule to be cute. I'm not sure I would delete a referenced academic claim that this was the case sometime before 1998. If you insist on no exceptions, I don't know if any closed class in any language would hold up to scrutiny, which would trivialize the concept. It might be more productive to just explain the range of exceptions in current Japanese. --JWB (talk) 23:47, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Lack of verbal borrowing isn't the same as verbs being a closed class. Verbal -i "adjectives" might be a semi-closed class (there are a couple exceptions there too, like kiiroi "yellow" and substandard kirei), but that's no more odd than -ing -ang -ung verbs being a semi-closed class in English. And verbs being an actual closed class isn't AFAIK all that rare either; this seemed like another case of mythic Japanese exceptionalism.
Agreed, "closedness" of a class is a cline and seldom absolute. But is the rate of innovation in Japanese verbs over the last 400 years any less than in other languages with distinctive verbal morphology? kwami (talk) 04:41, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
English strong verbs are in fact cited as an example of a closed class, for example in Irregular verb, and equally worthy of not being thrown out by insisting on absolutes. Closed class explains "closed" as "no new items can normally be added" and "open" as "can and do get new words often", which is not in line with the all-or-nothing interpretation.
Not sure what you mean about kiiroi and kirei - I think both have been around for a long time. My understanding was that new and borrowed adjectives all become -na adjectives.
If we can find some data on the rate of new Japanese adjectives and verbs over some time period, that would be more valuable for the article than a blanket statement. I believe both are far lower than in open-class languages. --JWB (talk) 20:31, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but no-one makes a big deal about English strong verbs making the language unique in the world, or Spanish -go verbs, or French -ir verbs, etc. Lots of languages borrow verbs as noun + do. An open class is not dependent on loans, though of course any class that loans go in would be open.
Kiiroi is a new -i verb: it consists of Chinese loan ki 'yolk' and Japanese iro 'color'. The -i is just tacked on to the end. It's a fairly new word; Japanese didn't have a basic color term for yellow not too long ago.
Kirei likewise is a Chinese loan compound ki + rei, so the -i was not originally an inflectional ending, but a backformation. Also, no other -i verb stem ends in e. kwami (talk) 23:42, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
You could simply remove the "highly unusual" description (not "unique in the world") instead of the real information that these classes are closed to whatever degree.
Spanish -go verbs are only a handful of verbs otherwise no different from other verbs and not a great comparison. Pronouns in any Western language would be a better example of a whole class of words that is a closed class. A salient fact about Japanese that is unfamiliar to Westerners is that pronouns are an open class, so the open vs. closed class distinction is highly relevant in more than one way for describing Japanese to westerners and should be in the article.
I have only ever heard kirei na. --JWB (talk) 04:45, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
In formal--as well as prescriptive--grammar, kirei is an adjectival noun (形容動詞). Hence, it alone does not conjugate, but the suffixed na does. However, in certain colloquial Japanese registers, some speakers reinterpret the final -i is the standard adjectival suffix and conjugate it as a regular adjective. This produces expressions such as kirekunai "ain't pretty". This trend is not limited to adjectival nouns ending in -i though. An often heard example include hen -> henkunai "ain't it strange". Historically there has long been a transition of adjectival nouns into regular adjectives. This has left many doublets such as ōki.na / ōkii, chiisa.na / chiisai etc. The major difference now is that these modern examples often only seem to exist in negative form. 124.214.131.55 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:09, 26 December 2009 (UTC).
A couple things: we're not talking about a whole word class, only a subset of verbs that end in -i instead of -u or -ru.
Thanks anon for the okina/tiisana examples. I guess this raises the question of how open is "open".
Yes, Japanese personal pronouns (to the extent they can even be considered a word class at all, rather than simply a subset of nouns) are an open class. Again, though, this is not particular to Japanese, but is common throughout East and Southeast Asia. It seems to correspond to highly stratified cultures with elaborate registers of politeness or respect in their languages. kwami (talk) 07:06, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
You can take the viewpoint that -i adjectives are stative verbs and therefore merely verbs, but again this is something that differs from Western languages (where adjectives decline like nouns if at all) and has to be explained to the Western reader. Given that they correspond to Western adjectives and are far more numerous than other word classes except nouns and possibly verbs, it is sophistry to duck the question by disappearing them this way.
We had an academic citation for the closed class statement. This should stay as referenced relevant material is supposed to, qualified by explanations of exceptions like the above. Even if there was an opposing citation saying "adjectives are not a closed class" (which you haven't added so far) they would both stay as representative of opposed significant POVs.
I'm aware of the areal nature of open-class pronouns and have documented it in the past in East Asian languages. Again, this is no justification for disappearing it from the Japanese article. Even if main coverage is at East Asian languages the Japanese article should still have a link and summary.
ōki.na / ōkii, chiisa.na / chiisai are the only two such doublets I remember from my Japanese studies. --JWB (talk) 09:40, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Go ahead and put it back in if you like. I won't argue with you over it. Part of the problem I had with it was that the same reference was used to claim that this was something particular to Japanese, when it's only s.t. that Japanese differs from European languages in. I agree with you that the closure of verbs to borrowing and relatively unproductive nature of deriving verbs is s.t. that should be covered, as well as the relatively open nature of PNs. kwami (talk) 18:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
I do think it's interesting though that the loans which are inflected as verbs are things like double and Google which have the shape expected of verbs. It seems that the reason most loans are not treated as verbs is that they don't look like verbs, not that verbs are necessarily a closed class. kwami (talk) 01:09, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
I've restored then rewritten to try to make some of the points that have come out in the discussion above. --JWB (talk) 03:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Missing adjective form

The polite negative past form is missing from the adjective table. I reorganized it, by the way, so that it now has a consistent ordering of the forms. LokiClock (talk) 16:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Liberal omission of the subject of a sentence

I think this section is mistaken. What's generally being omitted is the TOPIC (which may or may not be the subject). Dropping the subject (when it wasn't the topic) would most likely make the sentence ungrammatical or confusing.

Dropping the subject when marked by GA:

Tokyo ni wa dare ga ikimashita ka? Who went to Tokyo

[x] Ikimashita. [I] did. (strange)

Dropping the topic (which happens to be the subject):

Tokyo ni ikimashita ka? Did you go to Tokyo.

Hai, ikimashita. Yes, I did.

(There are probably better example than this but you get the gist). Macgroover (talk) 15:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

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