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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votes
4
answers
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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 ...
- 15.2k
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votes
3
answers
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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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Linguistics and Japanese study
Firstly, I apologise if this has been asked before or if I have asked this in the wrong place (should I have asked on the meta site?).
I've studied Japanese for (going on) 5 years, now. It's been ...
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2
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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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answer
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How should we understand the plain form when used in novels set in the past?
I am trying to understand how the plain form is used in novels set in the past through the explanations in the paper referenced below. I wonder if someone could explain how we should understand the ...
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Is there a study available on the similarities between Japanese and Turkish grammars?
No I'm not claiming the Altaic hypothesis so try not to bring that up in answers.
Still there are grammatical similarities between Japanese and Turkish such as agglutination and use of postpositions ...
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5
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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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How is readability measured in Japanese?
First of all, I apologize if this question is better suited for the meta. It's a little theoretical, but it's also very much about the Japanese language, so I figured it was fine here.
I was looking ...
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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 ...
user1478
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3
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Expressing difference between "fluent" and "native speaker" in Japanese
I want to explain the difference between the English linguistic terms "fluent" and "native speaker". I could do this in English, but I'd also like to know if it's possible to do so in Japanese. To be ...
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2
answers
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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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6
votes
1
answer
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The genesis of pitch accent in Japanese
There is a significant amount of research relating to tonogenesis -- the mechanisms by which a toneless parent language develops tone. But what about the genesis of pitch accent?
For instance, the ...
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Why is the Japanese term for grammatical case 「格」? How did this translation come to be?
From Google's definition of 格:
きまり。法則。標準。
「格式・格言・合格・別格・破格・規格・本格・古格・適格・律令格式(りつりょうきゃくしき)」
《名・造》地位。身分。程度。
「格が違う」
方形に組みあわせた材。
「骨格・格子(こうし)・格天井(ごうてんじょう)」
くる。いたる。とおる。きわめる。
「格物致知」
...
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1
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動作 as opposed to 作用
The linguistics text I’m reading has a sentence with this fragment: 「動詞の表す動作・作用が[…]」。 Consulting dictionaries just made me more confused; what’s the contrast between the two in this context? “Action” ...
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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 ...
- 1,551
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2
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About ancient pronunciation on dictionaries
In large dictionaries like 広辞苑 or 大辞林, there are some entries tagged with "ancient pronunciations" which are almost identical to the modern ones but with a voiced consonant voiceless (or ...
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the different adverbia between 'mousugu', 'mamonaku', and sorosoro
What is the difference in meaning between "mousugu", "mamonaku", and "sorosoro"?
According to what I found, in English they all mean "soon"?
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1
answer
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How do you call different methods for writing numbers (notations)?
Are there proper terms for the methods of writing numbers in kanji (literal vs powers-of-10)?
千五百三十六
vs
一五三六
If not (or the terms are too scientific) how to differentiate between them in ...
- 6,537
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votes
2
answers
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How many possible phonological forms could be represented by a randomly chosen single character?
In Chinese, every character is monosyllabic and Mandarin has a total of about ~1200 licit syllables including tone (about 400 if you don't count tone). This means that if I take any Chinese character ...
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3
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Is there any merit to the claim that Japanese and Tamil are genetically related languages?
In India, regional nationalism is strongly tied to language. This is particularly the case in the Dravidian-speaking south, especially among speakers of Tamil - Tamil nationalists trot out all manner ...
- 5,645
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answer
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Is modern day keigo borrowed from kansai-ben? Sources?
I have heard on various occasions that modern day keigo was borrowed from Kansai-ben. It states this on Wikipedia:
Historically, extensive use of keigo (honorific speech) was a feature of Kansai-...
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3
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How were hiragana/katakana influenced by syllabary writing systems?
Today, I was in English class, and I learned about language families and then writing systems. Of course, there is kanji, and ideographic system, but hiragana and katakana are both syllabary systems.
...
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2
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How are conjugation endings called by Japanese linguists?
How are conjugation endings (たい, た, ない) called by Japanese linguists*?
Examples: 食べた tabeta 'ate', 食べない tabenai 'do not eat'
According to Wikipedia, and an electronic dictionary, it seems they are ...
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4
answers
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Please teach me more about ハダカ格
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_(grammar):
In certain languages, the agent is declined or otherwise marked to
indicate its grammatical role. In Japanese, for instance, the agentive
case ...
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2
answers
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Rules and phenomena about reading/writing words with kanji
I'm trying to learn Japanese but I'm the kind of person who can't really learn if they don't understand some of the mechanisms. I'm stuck when learning vocabulary because I can't just be like "OK this ...
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When should I use あそこで / そこで?
I have the sentence from 合格できる、日本語能力試験N２:
私は外国旅行をするたび、「 」専門の勉強をしている日本人の若い学者に会うと、思いがけない収穫をえる。
The choices for the blank are A）あそこで B）そこで C）ここで D）どこかで
I narrowed it down to either A or B, but then ...
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What do we know about the phonetic distinctions between the 甲類 and 乙類 syllables in 上代特殊仮名遣い? [closed]
上代特殊仮名遣い【じょうだいとくしゅかなづかい】 is a Nara-period practice in which two distinct versions of certain syllables (called 甲類【こうるい】 and 乙類【おつるい】, and denoted by subscript 1 and 2 in Latin script) were ...
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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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2
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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. ...
user1478
3
votes
1
answer
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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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1
answer
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How to interpret intransitives in non-past tense
I've been reading linguistics books lately and they've gotten me reexamining things I've learned in Japanese textbooks for foreign learners.
Susumu Kuno's book The Structure of the Japanese Language ...
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3
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1
answer
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What is the term for "Past Tense Negative Form" in Japanese?
Doing my Japanese practices today, and I've noticed that
Present Tense:
現在形
Negative Form:
否定形
Past Tense:
過去形
And I wondered what Negative Past tense is in Japanese. Thought it's an easy ...
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3
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2
answers
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Analyzing breakdown of jukugo
I may just be misunderstanding the etymology of certain words, but I think of certain jukugo e.g. 「大学生」as being derived from patterns like 「大学の学生」, where there is a kanji-level shiritori, leading to a ...
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Term for "Letter"/Symbol name vs. pronunciation
I was trying to explain to someone why spelling & reading in Japanese (at least with kana) is easy because the name of the letter is its pronuncation. (Yes, I realize kana are not strictly "...
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1
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Can compound words like 「外食」be considered as a morpheme?
According to Wikipedia,
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a
language. In other words, it is the smallest meaningful unit of a
language.
By that definition, do you ...
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1
answer
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Accent pattern of ています
According to the rules of accent, a "flat" verb (平板式) keeps flat in its て-form, and a non-"flat" (起伏式) verb is accented in the antepenultimate position in the て-form:
ア↑ビル（浴びる）→ ア↑...
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0
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Suffix as defined in romanized Japanese morphological analysis
Older grammar books tend to rely on a lot of romanization to teach the nitty-gritty of morphology, which is also reflected in some of @snail's answers like this one. I was reading Samuel Elmo Martin's ...
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0
answers
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Word lists/sources for pitch accent in Middle Japanese
Is there anywhere I can find a list of words and what their reconstructed pitches were in Middle Japanese? Or especially what words we have tone dot information on (with a preference for the oldest ...
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1
answer
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Are there words or phrases that are commonly mistyped by native speakers on the Internet?
Like how it is common to see their/there and "could/would/should of" instead of "could/would/should have" in English discussions.
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How does「~てほしい」work grammatically? [closed]
It seems like the verb that uses「~て」should be affected by an adverb or an auxiliary verb unless we have a string of「~て、~て ...」。Grammatically, for an adjective to affect a verb should require ...
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1
answer
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How do the Japanese ask questions about language? [closed]
In Japanese class, when you are confused about vocab or grammar or sentence structure, you ask the professor in English. But if you live in Japan and are communicating with Japanese natives who barely ...
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1
answer
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Does Japanese have postpositions?
Let's take the following sentence as an example:
八時に家を出ます。
I leave home at eight o'clock.
に and を are usually called particles. But に for example looks like "at" (preposition) that follows ...
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2
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Is the infinitive form the masu stem or does it include the masu?
Looking it up has gotten me mixed answers. I've seen people refer to either as the infinitive.
A follow-up: is the -ru on ichidan verbs seen as an auxiliary or is it part of the word?
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2
answers
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Does using 「だ」in だと思う actually serve a practical purpose?
I know it's to indicate whether something is a Na adjective or not, but other than the language rules stating it to be so, is there any real use of it?
I'm pretty sure everyone would understand you ...
- 1,493
1
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1
answer
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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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1
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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: ...
- 1,075
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vote
2
answers
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Terminology for leaving out parts of words
In Japanese some parts of words or letters often get left out in order to shorten them, but what is this phenomenon called? Does anyone know? Do you know the English terminology? The Japanese ...
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1
answer
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Comparing the "severity" of words of amount, degree, etc
I'm looking for lists of words/phrases of degree, ordered by how strong they are relative to each other.
For an example in English, I ran across this research recently: http://www.businessinsider....
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0
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Is there a word specifically for "a transitive/intransitive verb pair"?
There are many pairs of transitive and intransitive verbs in Japanese: e.g. 上げる and 上がる, 交える and 交じる, 広げる and 広がる.
Separately, transitive verbs are called 他動詞{たどうし} and intransitive verbs are called ...
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