Talk:Japanese grammar

Adjectival Noun vs. Nominal Adjective

For the sake of consistency, can we please stick to just one of these terms throughout the article? It's okay to have a parenthetical mention such as, "Also called X," but after that we should be consistent in our usage and not flip-flop between the two terms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.120.205.101 (talk) 23:52, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Cases

From the article:

Grammatical cases in Japanese are marked by particles placed after the nouns. A distinctive feature of Japanese is the presence of two cases which are roughly equivalent to the nominative case in other languages: one representing the sentence topic, other representing the subject. The most important case markers are the following:

• Nominative - が (ga) for subject, は (wa) for the topic
• Genitive - の (no)
• Dative - に (ni)
• Accusative - を (wo)
• Lative - へ (e), used for destination direction (like in "to some place")
• Ablative - から (kara), used for source direction (like in "from some place")
• Instrumental - で (de)

Although some authorities seem to describe particles in this way, personally I don't think it is helpful. I wouldn't call "noun + に" the "dative case" of a noun, any more than I would "to + noun" in English. Article Grammatical case says "Case is based fundamentally on changes to the noun to indicate the noun's role in the sentence. This is not how English works; instead, word order and prepositions are used to achieve this." I would say also "this is not how Japanese works". What do other people think? 109.145.59.124 (talk) 20:56, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

The particles make much more of a difference than the word order does. In the English, "The dog bites the man," the word order is what determines who is biting whom. In the Japanese, 「犬は人を噛む」, it's the particles doing the work. 「人を犬は噛む」 means the same thing. "The man bites the dog," does not. 107.4.45.152 (talk) 03:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Word order is really irrelevant. Particles in Japanese are not normally described as "cases"; the stuff at Grammatical case is almost totally unsourced, but I do not have access to the Takahashi grammar book: does anyone know exactly what he says? The case article claims that English does not have cases except remnants of the case system in pronouns; it is also claimed that the English possessive "'s" is not a case marker because it attaches to a syntactic constituent, as for example in "The King of Peru's nose", or "The King and I's closing scene" (not "The King and my closing scene"). Exactly the argument shows that Japanese particles are not case markers, because they attach to constituents. 説明するのが難しい: there is no cased noun (or any other part of speech). I have long contemplated just removing Japanese and Korean from the case article, because there is no evidence for the claims. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:11, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

What source says that Japanese doesn't have cases? I'm not aware of any. It's true that case inflection doesn't exist in Japanese, but the existence of case is universally acknowledged by linguists. Ga and wo are always referred to as case particles in both Japanese and English precisely because they denote case. For example, as Natsuko Tsujimura writes in An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics, "Japanese case particles resemble the case systems in other languages in that they mark the grammatical functions of accompanying nouns in a sentence, but they also exhibit a unique set of properties that are not commonly observed in other case systems." I could list hundreds of books on the uses of case in Japanese, but I don't know of any linguists who deny the existence of case in Japanese. What linguist denies that Japanese uses cases? Tikisim (talk) 03:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I accept your quote that Tsujimura calls them "case particles", but do not believe that this is universal. The problem is that she is probably simply using "case" to refer to the nom-acc-dat arrangment of three possibilities for first ("subject-y") argument, direct ("object") argument and indirect ("object") argument. If this means that Japanese "has case", then exactly the same argument shows that English "has case", but everyone seems to agree that it doesn't. (Or if you like, "If 's is a clitic, then が is a clitic.) And while distinguishing these three sorts of "grammatical" argument maps to the standard cases, the particles have none of the standard properties of case-marking. They do not apply to nouns, adjectives, or any other part of speech, they attach to nominal phrases. And if you are allowed to lump in semantic words like から, English must have at least 15 cases, formed with "from", "under", "below" and so on and so on. Do any of the linguists answer any of my questions above? 説明するのが難しい: what does "case" apply to here? Imaginatorium (talk) 19:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Case particles are understood as a particular grammatical feature of Japanese intended to mark the case of various parts of speech. This view is, as far as I know, universal. There isn't a part of speech in English for the specific purpose of denoting case. If there is a linguist that doesn't call them Japanese case particles (kaku-joshi), I wouldn't mind including that view, but I'm not sure it actually exists. Ga, for instance, is universally recognized as denoting nominative case, including in the nominalized clause you created above. As Gisaburo Kiyose writes in Japanese Grammar - A New Approach: "A noun-substantive being in the nominative case with the suffix-ga indicates that the noun is the subject of the sentence. In written language, the nominative case suffix -ga must be added to the grammatical subject." Tikisim (talk) 03:23, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Black cats

There is an example of a noun phrase for "black cat", given as 黒猫 (kuroneko). "Adjective" is essentially undefined w.r.t. Japanese, and you could argue that this is a compound noun rather than a noun phrase, but it is head-final, which is the point of the paragraph. An IP has repeatedly changed this to "黒い猫" (kuroi neko), which would not be wrong (kuroi is the "true adjective" form) but glossing it kuro no neko which demonstrates a failure to know hiragana. Imaginatorium (talk) 03:48, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I suppose that the IP is aiming at a Japanese version of the English examples above this. But the first two of these English examples are screwy -- or anyway they are for me, who hasn't read anything by Greenberg. Here they are, after markup-stripping:

genitive phrase, i.e., noun modified by another noun ("the cover of the book", "the book's cover");

I'm unfamiliar with the concept of "genitive phrase"; I don't see any of what I'd call modification; and at least one in each of these pairs is not a noun but instead a noun phrase.

noun governed by an adposition ("on the table", "underneath the table");

These aren't nouns; they're noun phrases. And I'm puzzled by "governed by"; rather, I'd say they're complements. I'll skip the third; so the fourth one is:

noun modified by an adjective ("black cat").

Well, the most straightforward example, for expository purposes, of this in Japanese would be 黒い猫, I suppose. Which is commoner, that or 黒猫? The answer is perhaps complicated by the 宅急便 trademark. But I note that Google shows 赤パンツ (in quotation marks) as about half as common again as 赤いパンツ (in quotation marks). -- Hoary (talk) 04:52, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, the article is not very good. But this is partly due to a WP:axiom which happens to be false: if you collect together various bits of writing each of which is coherent, the whole will be. But there is no generally agreed set of terminology for Japanese grammar, so an article could only be written by starting with a description of the terminology and conventions which will be used in this article. This would be argued as being "WP:OR", and people would add new bits in using completely different conventions, so sadly it's hopeless. But the section above is quite understandable, I think. Which one do you want me to expound on? Imaginatorium (talk) 07:56, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I can share something I learned about い。The question is 黒い猫 vs. 黒猫 and/or 赤いパンツ vs. 赤パンツ。Has thought been given to spoken word vs. written word? Many times い is omitted during casual speech. Dialect can also play a role in this. This may or may not apply to the concerns listed here. I am a student, not a teacher. Thank you. David Spalding Irish (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@David Spalding Irish: This is not a difference between written and spoken, nor between levels of formality.

When including the い, for these color words, the grammar is explicitly [ADJ] + [NOUN].

When omitting the い, for these color words, the grammar is explicitly [NOUN] + [NOUN].

The "basic" Japanese color words, those that can take い, become nouns when that い ending is missing. Thus, 黒 (kuro) doesn't mean "black (adjective)", it means "black (noun)", as in, "the color black". Likewise for 赤 (aka, "red"), 白 (shiro, "white"), 青 (ao, "blue / green"). The distinction is subtle and doesn't carry much nuance, so in translation, there really isn't any appreciable difference between 黒い猫 (kuroi neko, "black cat") and 黒猫 (kuroneko, "black cat"). Certain things that are very commonly black might usually or idiomatically be called kuro[NOUN] as a compound noun, while things that are less commonly black will take the adjectival phrase form as kuroi [NOUN].

HTH, 205.166.76.242 (talk) 18:44, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Lead section is too specialized/jargon-y

" "Japanese is a synthetic language [...] with both productive and fixed elements..." "

Does anyone know what "productive and fixed elements" is referring to? After a cursory search through the references and a few linguistics resources online, I can't find any usage of these terms. Are they commonly accepted in the field? The closest I could find is Productivity (linguistics), but I'm not sure how the phrase "productive elements" arises from this definition.

In general, I feel that this article's lead section is too filled with jargon to be useful to anyone outside the field of linguistics. In comparison, the leads on Spanish grammar and English grammar are much more informative. I plan to rewrite this lead accordingly; let me know if any changes are too drastic. — Shitakunai (talk) 02:18, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

As someone with some knowledge in linguistics, that is a pretty vague statement. I think it meant to say that some grammatical processes are productive and some... aren't. Just like every other language. You're free to remove it.

An even bigger problem is its length; it doesn't come close to summarizing the article. Nothing is said about verbs or particles, for example.--Megaman en m (talk) 06:54, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, I've removed it and rewritten the lead. Also added a few sentences about verbs and particles. Shitakunai (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Small change

I know this matter doesn't have to do with Japanese grammar, but I think it could use clearer terminology:

"The conjugation of i-adjectives has similarities to the conjugation of verbs, unlike Western languages where inflection of adjectives, where it exists, is more likely to have similarities to the declension of nouns. Verbs and adjectives being closely related is unusual from the perspective of English, but is a common case across languages generally, and one may consider Japanese adjectives as a kind of stative verb."

By "Western", does that paragraph technically mean Indo-European? Uralic languages like Hungarian and Finnish, which aren't Indo-European, can be considered "Western", but that doesn't necessarily mean that they have similarities aside from loanwords spread via geographic proximity. It gets even more ambiguous since Turkic or Afro-Asiatic (such as Semitic) languages would definitely be considered Western from a Japanese perspective, but aren't really considered Western in the usual sense.

ThighFish (talk) 04:09, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Module nihongo3 ≠ Module Nihongo krt

@Ineffablebookkeeper: your edit on 2021-12-28 entirely removed the module "nihongo krt" from the article, with the following comment:

"replaced nihongo krt with nihongo3, as they essentially do the same thing, and honestly, when I have the time, I'll likely submit krt to TfD."

However, to say that 'a different order of words is the same thing' is to ignore that there may be deliberate choices in word order that improve the experience for the reader. That is exactly what the difference between nihongo3 and nihongo krt is supposed to achieve. nihongo shows English first; nihongo3 shows romaji first; nihongo krt shows kanji/kana first. So in your edit, by replacing all nihongo krt with nihongo3, you are redirecting the focus in every context away from the original Japanese script toward the romanised transliteration. I'm not sure that is the best way for every context, especially on articles that explicitly describe or explain Japanese language. Perhaps, from a stylistic point-of-view, the article could take an entirely "romaji-first" approach; however you must check each and every replaced occurrence where you've changed the word order from "krt" (kanji-romaji-transliteration) to "tkr" (transliteration-kanji-romaji) to make sure that you haven't introduced confusion where it wouldn't have existed otherwise. If you have introduced confusion from the change of word order, then you can either revert the change or re-word the context to eliminate the confusion.

Secondly, there are currently 39 transclusions of nihongo krt, within less than 1 year of its introduction on Wikipedia. That's not bad, and I wouldn't say that it's grounds for removal (or discussion to be removed). But it serves a very strong purpose, mainly on the Japanese verb conjugation page (where it's transcluded 536 times). In that article, the kana is essential to notice the patterns within the context of conjugation. However, discussing the future of nihongo krt is best done on it's talk page, not here (or in the comments of edits on this page either).

But back to the main point: Did you verify if the change of word order (from krt to tkr) was the best choice for each instance in the article? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 17:12, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

To give an example of what I believe a poor choice of removing nihongo krt from every instance within the article, there were some sentences about particles which are now more confusing by changing the word order. For example (there are many more):

• Previously: In this function it is interchangeable with へ (e).
• Currently: In this function it is interchangeable with e (へ).

Discussing particles really ought to use kana first, thus the former usage (with へ first) makes more sense in that context. Please consider reverting your changes on the situations where the former word order was more logical for the reader. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 17:26, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@JKVeganAbroad: - I'll have to respond to this properly later, but I'll direct you to this ongoing discussion - I think you're right, and I probably got overzealous in clearing up some very peripheral templates.

At present, we're discussing a single template, similar to {{lang-zh}}, that covers all functions and orders an editor could need, with the inclusion of named parameters in-template to avoid (what at present is a lot of) instances of editors filling out parameters incorrectly. I do cover all six existing nihongo templates within this discussion - please chime in if you have suggestions.

However, it's unlikely that any sort of bot is gonna be introduced to replace these templates, as they would violate WP:COSMETICBOT. If you see any instances where kanji should come first, could I please ask that you use {{lang}} and follow it up with {{transl}}? Again - I'm sorry for causing issues; but we are staring down the barrel of replacing 97,000 instances of {{nihongo}} and 12,000 instances of {{nihongo2}} by hand. It's unlikely that individual templates are going to get kept; there's no reason not to roll them into one. Please let me know if there are instances throughout the article where the presentation of kanji and transliterations is prominent and needs replacing, and I can have a look at fixing it.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 17:53, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your understanding. I'm definitely in support of a unified module; however, for fear of vaporware, I'd prefer not to avoid using krt until the better solution actually exists. Until then, would you mind if I revert your edit to restore the original word order in the article? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 02:49, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Ineffablebookkeeper: I've just noticed that in some of your edits, your edit summaries don't match your edits. Specifically, you switched a lot of perfectly functional nihongo krt modules into nihongo or nihongo3 modules in many of your edits without stating the fact that you are doing so. In fact, many of your edits are entirely uncommented with no information in the edit summary. Furthermore, you've conflated the edits of nihongo krt with other miscellaneous (but very useful and well needed) edits.

In future, it would be much more helpful to do big changes in single-step edits. For example, when adding content—only add content, when fixing errors—only fix errors, when changing modules—only change modules. As it stands, there is no easy way to manually revert your nihongo krt without manually going through the whole article—which has over 125000 bytes worth of information—and identifying where kana should be written first. I'm a little annoyed about it, because I've already done this to the whole article and it took me days to change the raw untagged Japanese text into optimally parsed HTML tagged text (via the entire library of nihongo modules). During that time, I preserved the order of the editors who preceded me, selecting the appropriate nihongo module to not change the word order at all. There were only a few cases where I changed the kana ordering where it was glaringly obvious. The point is, I was very careful. Your conflated edits, on the other hand, could use a little more care (by commenting every edit summary accurately, and by publishing different types of edits separately, and by not applying a "one-size-fits-all" search and replace on code that actually changes the word order).

Actually, I agree with many of your edit choices where you've changed the prose to be English or rōmaji first. Reverting is not an option. But, absolutely, the article needs to be re-analysed from beginning to end, and reconsider the best word order for every kana moment (and every romaji–English moment). — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 15:25, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@JKVeganAbroad: - I'm sorry. My edits have been rushed, and I haven't been in the best of minds lately; lockdown has proven a relatively shitty living situation for me.

I should've gone through and conducted edits in more steps - heaven knows I've been on the receiving end of large-scale edits of muddled overall quality before, and I don't envy the task of having to dig through that. I will have a look over myself and fix the order where necessary; again, I apologise.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 16:50, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Section titled Controversy over the characterization of nominal adjectives

This section seems to require, for any kind of understanding, knowledge that is not to be found anywhere on this page. Could it perhaps be moved to the Japanese adjectives article, for example? Or else, could extra information about these adjectives be included in this page, to make that section meaningful? Or perhaps both? W. P. Uzer (talk) 21:38, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Capitals for romanization of katakana

Many (but not all) of the example sentences in the "Particles" section have capitalized words in the romanization, apparently reflecting the fact that those words are written in katakana (which seems to me irrelevant to the topic of that section). Is this standard? necessary? W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

It is neither standard, nor necessary, and not in any obvious way helpful at all. Though it is the sort of thing you see quite often. Like John being called "JON", instead of the more natural "Jon-san" in the later examples. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:41, 17 June 2022 (UTC)