Japanese grammar

The Japanese language has a highly regular agglutinative verb morphology, with both productive and fixed elements. Typologically, its most prominent feature is topic creation: Japanese has prominent topics (although it is possible for topics and subjects to be distinct). Grammatically, Japanese is an SOV dependent-marking language, with verbs always constrained to the sentence-final position, except in some rhetorical and poetic usage. The word order is free as long as the order of dependent-head is maintained among all constituents: the modifier or relative clause precedes the modified noun, the adverb precedes the modified verb, the genitive nominal precedes the possessed nominal, and so forth. Thus, Japanese is a strongly left-branching language; to contrast, Romance languages such as Spanish are strongly right-branching, and Germanic languages such as English are weakly right-branching.

Textual classifications

"Text" (文章 "bunshō") is composed of "sentences" (文 "bun"), which are in turn composed of "phrases" (文節 "bunsetsu"), which are its smallest coherent components. Like Chinese and classical Korean, written Japanese does not typically demarcate words with spaces; its agglutinative nature further makes the concept of a "word" rather different from words in English. Word divisions are informed by semantic cues and a knowledge of phrase structure. 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. In the following example, "bunsetsu" are indicated by vertical bars::太陽が｜東の｜空に｜昇る。:"taiyō ga | higashi no | sora ni | noboru":sun SUBJECT | east POSSESSIVE | sky LOCATIVE | rise:The sun rises in the eastern sky.

Some scholars romanize Japanese sentences by inserting spaces only at phrase boundaries ("i.e.", "taiyō-ga higashi-no sora-ni noboru"), in effect treating an entire phrase as the equivalent of an English word. There is a good reason for this: phonologically, the postpositional particles are part of the word they follow, and within a phrase the pitch accent can fall at-most once. Traditionally, however, a more basic concept of "word" (単語 "tango") forms the atoms of sentences. Words, unlike phrases, need not have intrinsic meaning, therefore admitting particles and auxiliary verbs. It must be noted that some classical auxiliary verbs such as "-ta" (which might have developed as a contraction of "-te ari") are grammaticalized as "conjugations" or "verb endings" in modern Japanese, not individual words.:私｜は｜毎日｜学校｜へ｜歩いて｜行く。:"watashi | wa | mainichi | gakkō | e | aruite | iku":first-person | TOPIC | everyday | school | TOWARDS | walk-CONTINUATIVE | go:Every day I walk to school.

Subjects are de-emphasized in Japanese: they are most commonly found at introductions of topics, or in situations where an ambiguity might result with their omission. Thus, the following sentence has more than one possible translation:日本に行きました:"nihon ni ikimashita":Japan LOCATIVE go-POLITE-PERFECTThe words translate literally to "went to Japan", but the meaning depends on context: if the topic is the first person, then it means "I went to Japan"; for a third person, "he/she went to Japan", and so forth. The closest analogue in Japanese of the subject-predicate structure of Western languages is the so-called topic construction. Consider the following pair of sentences::太陽が昇る。:"taiyō ga noboru":sun SUBJECT rise
:太陽は昇る。:"taiyō wa noboru":sun TOPIC riseBoth sentences mean "the sun rises", but the sun (太陽 "taiyō") in the first sentence is the subject, and in the second the topic. The difference is a matter of context and focus. As a subject — indicated by the particle が ("ga") — the sentence is a specific observation that the sun rises. For instance, one might say the following (surprising) statement::今夜は、太陽が昇る。:"kon'ya wa, taiyō ga noboru":tonight TOPIC sun SUBJECT rise:Tonight, the sun rises.When the sun is a topic — using the particle は ("wa") — the statement is less focused on the sun, and is a general statement of fact. It is often a description of a state or a judgment, rather than a particular observation.

Word classification

The structure of this article will mirror the following classification of words. There are two broad categories: "independent words" (自立語 "jiritsugo") having internal meaning, and "ancillary words" (付属語 "fuzokugo") which are meaning modifiers.

Independent words divide into a conjugable (活用語 "katsuyōgo") class containing verbs (動詞 "dōshi"), "i"-type adjectives (形容詞 "keiyōshi"), and "na"-type adjectives (形容動詞 "keiyōdōshi"), and a non-conjugable (非活用語 "hikatsuyōgo" or 無活用語 "mukatsuyōgo") class containing nouns (名詞 "meishi"), pronouns (代名詞 "daimeishi"), adverbs (副詞 "fukushi"), conjunctions (接続詞 "setsuzokushi"), interjections (感動詞 "kandōshi") and prenominals (連体詞 "rentaishi").

Ancillary words also divide into a non-conjugable class, containing grammatical particles (助詞 "joshi") and counter words (助数詞 "josūshi"), and a conjugable class consisting of auxiliary verbs (助動詞 "jodōshi"). There is not wide agreement among linguists as to the English translations of the above terms.

Nouns and other deictics

If the sentence has more than one grammatical or semantic subject, then the target of "jibun" is the subject of the "primary" or "most prominent action"; thus in the following sentence "jibun" refers unambiguously to Shizuko (even though Makoto is the grammatical subject) because the primary action is Shizuko's reading.:誠は静子に自分の家で本を読ませた。:"Makoto wa Shizuko ni jibun no uchi de hon o yomaseta.":Makoto made Shizuko read book(s) in her house.

In practice the main action is not always discernible, in which case such sentences are ambiguous. The use of "jibun" in complex sentences follows non-trivial rules.

There are also equivalents to "jibun" such as "mizukara". Other uses of the reflexive pronoun in English are covered by adverbs like "hitorideni" which is used in the sense of "by oneself". For example:機械がひとりでに動き出した:"kikai ga hitorideni ugokidashita":"The machine started operating by itself."

Reflexive pronouns are not used to change a verb's valency as in many European languages other than English. Instead, separate (but usually related) intransitive verbs and transitive verbs are used.

Demonstratives

# The unexpected ending is due to the verb's root being "tsukaw-" but [w] only being pronounced before [a] in modern Japanese.

The above are only the stem forms of the verbs; to these one must add various verb endings in order to get the fully conjugated verb. The following table lists the most common conjugations. See Japanese verb conjugations for a full list. In cases where the form is different based on the conjugation group of the verb, arrows point to the correct formation rule.
# note that these are just forms of the "i"-type adjective ない ("nai")
# since most adjectives describe non-volitional conditions, the volitional form is interpreted as "it is possible", if sensible. In some rare cases it is semi-volitional: 良かろう ("yokarō", OK, lit: let it be good) in response to a report or request.

Adjectives too are governed by euphonic rules in certain cases, as noted in the section on it below. For the polite negatives of "na"-type adjectives, see also the section below on the copula だ ("da").

The copula (だ "da")

The copula "da" behaves very much like a verb or an adjective in terms of conjugation.

(*) usu. not reflected in spelling

Modern pronunciation is a result of a long history of phonemic drift that can be traced back to written records of the thirteenth century, and possibly earlier. However, it was only in 1946 that the Japanese ministry of education modified existing kana usage to conform to the standard dialect (共通語 "kyōtsūgo"). All earlier texts used the archaic orthography, now referred to as historical kana usage. The adjoining table is a nearly exhaustive list of these spelling changes. Unlike the tradition found in English-speaking countries, where people learn that Middle English (e.g., Chaucer) was pronounced differently from the modern language, it is not generally understood that the historical "kana" spellings were, at one point, reflective of pronunciation. For example, えふ (lit. "efu") for "leaf" (葉, modern "ha") was pronounced something like [epu] by the Japanese at the time it was borrowed. However, a modern reader of a classical text would still read this as [yoo] , the modern pronunciation.

As mentioned above, conjugations of some verbs and adjectives differ from the prescribed formation rules because of euphonic changes. Nearly all of these euphonic changes are themselves regular. For verbs the exceptions are all in the ending of the continuative form of group when the following auxiliary has a "ta"-sound, "i.e.", た ("ta"), て ("te"), たり ("tari"), etc.

In speech, common combinations of conjugation and auxiliary verbs are contracted in a fairly regular manner.

*Note: 得る "eru"/"uru" is the only modern verb of "shimo nidan" type (and it is different from the "shimo nidan" type of classical Japanese), with conjugations: imperfective え, continuative え, terminal える or うる, attributive うる, hypothetical うれ, imperative えろ or えよ.

Notes

Bibliography

* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. "Journal of the American Oriental Society", "66", 97–109.
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. "Language", "22", 200–248.
* Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), "Subject and topic" (pp. 25–56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1973). "The structure of the Japanese language". Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11049-0.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), "Subject and topic" (pp. 417–444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Makino, Seiichi & Tsutsui, Michio. (1986). "A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar". Japan Times. ISBN 4-7890-0454-6
* Makino, Seiichi & Tsutsui, Michio. (1995). "A dictionary of intermediate Japanese grammar". Japan Times. ISBN 4-7890-0775-8
* Martin, Samuel E. (1975). "A reference grammar of Japanese". New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01813-4.
* McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). "Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: 口語日本文法便覧 [Kōgo Nihon bunpō benran] ". Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-590-00570-0; ISBN 0-89346-149-0.
* Mizutani, Osamu; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). "How to be polite in Japanese: 日本語の敬語 [Nihongo no keigo] ". Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4-7890-0338-8.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), "The major languages of east and south-east Asia". London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04739-0.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). "The languages of Japan". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-36918-5 (pbk).
* Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). "Japanese women's language". New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-640030-X. Graduate Level
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). "An introduction to Japanese linguistics". Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). "The handbook of Japanese linguistics". Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. Readings/Anthologies

ee also

* Japanese counter word
* Japanese punctuation

External links

* [http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/afaq.html FAQ] for sci.lang.japan.
* [http://japan-studies.com/language/grammar/ Japanese grammar breakdown]
* [http://learnjapanese.elanguageschool.net/course/view.php?id=7 Japanese Grammar Lessons] – Comprehensive Japanese grammar lessons.
* [http://www.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm "Visualizing Japanese Grammar"] – Animated Japanese Grammar Lessons from George Washington University.