Questions tagged [linguistics]
言語学. The study of languages.
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Why does Japanese have two kinds of adjectives? (-i adjectives and -na adjectives)
Japanese has two kinds of adjectives known by several terms but the ones I know are i-adjectives and na-adjectives - why?
I recall that Japanese adjectives are much more like verbs than in English ...
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Actual phonetic realization of "devoiced" vowels
Descriptions of Japanese phonology (such as Wikipedia's) usually describe high vowels between voiceless consonants (or word-finally) as "devoiced". For example, the pronunciation of ⟨圧⟩ 'pressure' and ...
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Do native speakers learn consonant and vowel length easily, or is it difficult?
Just want to ask if this is normal or I am just fighting the wrong way.
かっこいい say this word has the final 2 い which shall take 2 length of the i sound.
I am struggling to keep trying to speak with 2 ...
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Is Japanese really an agglutinative language?
In the linguistics topic of language typology, Japanese is often included in lists of agglutinative (or agglutinating) languages, but when learning or reading about Japanese grammar exclusively this ...
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Nouns exhibiting vowel fronting
As touched upon in another thread, there are several nouns that exhibit a kind of vowel shift in older forms, where the ending vowel is fronted when the noun is used on its own to become /i/ or /e/, ...
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Does Japanese have any infixes?
In English, we have prefixes, like "pre-"; suffixes, like "-ize"; and arguably, expletives that function as infixes (one classic example is "abso-fucking-lutely").
In Japanese, we also have prefixes,...
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Does Japanese have morphemes that span two kanji?
I read once (in this comment by Victor Mair on Language Log) that Chinese has single morphemes that span two hanzi. The example given was the Chinese word pútáo 葡萄. At the time, I assumed it applied ...
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Which verb receives a negation in a Japanese sentence?
I can say 歩いて渡る which translates to "to cross by walking". However, if I would like to say "I am not going to cross by walking, but by some other means", would I say
歩かないで渡る or 歩いて渡らない?
There are ...
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Are on’yomi words loanwords?
this is probably a silly question, but since words with multiple kanji are usually read with on’yomi would that effectively make most japanese vocabulary loanwords? like 森林 or 図書館?i understand ...
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Difference between 「にかかわらず」 and 「にもかかわらず」
I would like to know the difference between 「にかかわらず」 and 「にもかかわらず」 with regard to the semantics of the predicate-argument relation.
Do they express the same semantic relation (non-causality?)? or ...
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Can 「食べも飲みもしない」 be rewritten as 「食べなくも飲まなくもある」?
I'd like to see if I understand a couple grammar points correctly. I'd like to rewrite this sentence:
1. 食べも飲みもしない
As either one of these:
2a. 食べなくも 飲まなくもある
2b. ...
1
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1
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一段動詞が五段動詞に進化できますか?
日本語の文法では五段動詞の方が一段動詞より多いです。文法が変化すると、一段動詞が五段動詞に変化する可能性がありますか?
私は日本語を練習したいです。上手くなければすみません。
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Syntactic Properties of "Bare Numerals": 「一」in「其の一」
I am currently attempting to research the syntax of nominal classifiers (i.e. "counter" words like 「〜台」and 「〜個」) and wanted to look for references to the irregular phenomenon of "bare" numerals: ...