User:RJCraig/Japanese grammar rewrite

Japanese verbs

In his monumental work on Classical Japanese, Alexander Vovin has the following to say on the traditional classification of Japanese verbs:

Students usually learn the Classical Japanese verbal structure as described by the traditional system, which has its foundation in the works of Japanese 国語学 Kokugogaku (study of the national language) philologists of the eighteenth century. Although this sytem of analysis has the longest history, it should be clear from the following that it is quite cumbersome and more misleading than helpful. The inadequacy of the traditional system stems mainly from the fact that traditional Japanese philologists were bound by the syllabic nature of the Japanese script, and were never able correctly to analyse the verbal morphology in general. In particular, they failed to analyse the morphological boundaries in verbal forms. The failure of the traditional approach to recognize units smaller than a syllable, and consequently the inability to draw a morphological boundary within a syllable, created the situation whereby the traditional system has complicated the description of Classical Japanese grammar. In particular, more verbal classes are differentiated by the traditional system than actually exist. ... Besides providing a more scientific description of the language, the [structural] approach has the important advantage that, once understood, it liberates the student from the necessity of memorizing not only several excessive verbal classes but also the rules for which suffixes follow which 'bases'.

The above observation is no less true of the analysis of the modern language which is taught to students in kokugo classes across Japan and often simply translated wholesale for introduction to second-language learners around the world. The following presents a simpler analysis on the basis of the principles of modern morphological analysis and essentially recapitulates the analysis of Bernard Bloch.

Conjugations

Regular Japanese verbs fall into only two conjugation patterns—weak and strong—depending on whether the stem of the verb ends in a vowel (either i or e) or a consonant (b, g, k, m, n, r, s, t or w), respectively. There are also two irregular verbs, suru "do" and kuru "come". Two forms must be known in to order to conjugate a verb correctly; learners are often advised to remember the citation or "dictionary" form and either the "past" or the "-masu" form.

Stems and bases

Weak conjugation (vowel-stem) verbs have only one stem form, which is invariable and to which all endings are added. The stems of strong conjugation (consonant-stem) verbs show morphophonemic variation and have a second, alternate form which is used in the past, "gerundive" ("-te form") and provisional forms. Strong verbs can be further divided into three subclasses depending on the form of this second stem: "TRW verbs", "BMN verbs" and "GKS verbs".

• TRW verbs: the final consonant of the stem is replaced with Q (the moraic obstruent, or sokuon) and assimilates to the first consonant of the following ending
• BMN verbs: the final consonant of the stem is replaced by N (the moraic nasal, or hatsuon)
• GKS verbs: the final consonant of the stem is dropped (except in s-verbs, which retain it) and i added to the end

Although the traditional system distinguishes up to five or six verbal "bases", there is only one form in addition to the above stems which is needed to derive all forms of any Japanese verb: a special "continuative" or "infinitive" base (the ren'yōkei of the traditional analysis) which is created by suffixing i to the first stem of strong verbs. (For weak verbs, the continuative is identical to the verb stem.)

	Weak verbs		Strong verbs
Examples	miru	taberu	katu	karu	kau	asobu	momu	sinu	kagu	kaku	osu
Stem	mi	tabe	kat	kar	kaw	asob	mom	sin	kag	kak	os
2nd Stem	—	—	kaQ	kaQ	kaQ	asoN	moN	siN	kai	kai	osi
Continuative	mi	tabe	kat.i	kar.i	ka.i	asob.i	mom.i	sin.i	kag.i	kak.i	os.i

In Modern Japanese, w disappears before all vowels except a, explaining the apparent irregularity in the W-verbs. The verb iku "go" is also slightly irregular and differs from other K-verbs in the form of its second stem: iQ instead of the expected *ii.

The second stem of BMN-verbs and G-verbs requires voiced allomorphs of the endings used with it; e.g. -da instead of -ta for the past form, etc.

Endings

The endings used with verb stems and derived bases also exhibit a degree of allomorphy. For example, the ending used to create the negative non-past form is either -na.i or -ana.i (which can be abbreviated as -(a)na.i for convenience; the dot shows a morphemic boundary within the ending, which itself conjugates like an adjective). Other examples of ending allomorphy are the imperative -ro/-e, optative -(y)ō, conditional -(r)eba, potential -(rar)e.ru, passive -(r)are.ru and causative -(s)ase.ru—the occurrence of all of which are determined solely by whether the verb stem ends in a vowel or a consonant. There is also variation in the voicing of the initial consonant of the past tense and related endings (e.g., -ta vs. -da) depending on the final consonant of the stem of strong verbs.

Formal Distinctions

The Japanese verb distinguishes two modes (affirmative and negative), two tenses (non-past and past), five voices (active, passive, potential, causative and causative passive) and 6(?) moods (indicative, imperative, tentative, conditional, provisional and volitional [=optative]).

(Politeness?)

Active Indicative

The affirmative non-past active indicative is formed by adding the ending -(r)u to the stem of all verbs, the past by adding -ta. (Note that the second stem is used for strong verbs, with assimilation of the Q to t.)

Mode	Affirmative				Negative
Conjugation	Weak	Strong	Irregular		Weak	Strong	Irregular
Non-past	mi.ru	kar.u	ku.ru	su.ru	mi.na.i	kar.ana.i	ko.na.i	si.na.i
Past	mi.ta	kat.ta	ki.ta	si.ta	mi.na.kat.ta	kar.ana.kat.ta	ko.na.kat.ta	si.na.kat.ta

Bibliography

• Vovin, Alexander (2003). A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-7007-1716-1.

Things to do...

Add note somewhere: This article uses the Kunrei-shiki romanization in tables, not the Hepburn.

Needs more citations!

(-tari form?)

Work area

Table of verb forms

header 1	header 2	header 3	header 4
mi.ru	mi.na.i	mi.mas.u	mi.mas.en
mi.ta	mi.na.kat.ta	mi.masi.ta	mi.mas.en-desi.ta