Appendix talk:Japanese verbs

Page revamp proposed

Hello anyone watching this --

This page looks like it could use a substantial reworking; I notice a few mistakes in the Stem forms intro para, the table could do with some visual reorganizing, and I find all the other sections a bit confusing, with the page as a whole suffering from a general sense of incompleteness and Rough-draft-osis. If no one objects, I'll create a private copy of the page under my User page, and see what I can do that might be useful. ご意見等がございましたら、何卒お書きください。

よろしくお願いいたします。

-- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 23:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Please do! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

English terminology for godan

I confess that the quinquigrade term that recently appeared sounds awful to me -- I doubt most English readers will understand this clearly. I'm changing this to five-grade, as a much more immediately comprehensible term. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:42, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. By the way, what do you think about the current English terminology used in inflectional templates? {{ja-i}} for example presents -kereba as conditional and -kattara as the provisional, but in Bjarke Frellesvig's A History of the Japanese Language it is kereba which is the provisional, with the conditional being kattara ~ kutewa. I have no linguistic background to say anything about this, though. --Dine2016 (talk) 02:09, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Dine2016: I think it comes down to how one defines one's terms.  :) Even as English, provisional and conditional are not really all that usefully distinct without further context. As usage, [VERB or ADJ stem][k]ereba [RESULT] implies that the verb or adjective before the kereba (be it a verb or adjective) is a requirement of the result; [VERB or ADJ] to [RESULT] implies that the result is an inevitable outcome of the verb or adjective; and [VERB or ADJ][k]a[t]tara [RESULT] implies a less strict causal relationship, and if the verb or adjective happened to be the case, then maybe the result happens.

FWIW, I disagree with Frellesvig's inclusion of kutewa here -- this is not a "form" per se, but rather kute + particle wa, as amply demonstrated by evidence of kute + other particles. Moreover, the usage patterns for kattara and kute wa are rather different.

Anyway, I hope that helps. Describing grammar is always difficult, even more so when describing grammar in another language. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 03:47, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

koyo as the imperative of k-irregular 来る

The page states that "-i and -yo are the k class' equivalent to -ro and -yo above, and follow the same distinction.", That is, it states that -i is the spoken imperative and -yo is the written imperative. However, the use of koyo, the form in 文語 (which should be interpreted as "Classical Japanese", not "the written register of Modern Japanese" in the first place) is pretty much dead in Modern Japanese. The -yo form for monograde verbs can be (not infrequently) found when trying to sound formal, archaic or stylistic, but in those contexts the imperative 来よ is never used, and instead is represented by suppletive 来たれ, the imperative of the godan verb 来たる. Japanese textbooks that lists both -ro and -yo as the imperative of monograde verbs never list koyo as a possible form in Modern Japanese, and so is also the case for the table in Japanese Wiktionary. Hence I believe this koyo should be removed. https://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BB%98%E9%8C%B2:%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E3%81%AE%E6%B4%BB%E7%94%A8 Hsjoihs (talk) 05:33, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@Hsjoihs: Note that the EN Wikt currently does not distinguish between modern JA and Classical JA (i.e. 口語 and 文語) in our language headings. Consequently, we do include Classical terms under a ==Japanese== heading. So I don't think the koyo form should be outright removed from the table.

That said, I agree that usage for koyo is a bit different from the ~yo imperatives for the 一段 verbs, and thus the descriptive text should be improved to clarify that koyo is restricted to Classical (or at least deliberately archaic) contexts. If you have any clear ideas, please have a go at editing the page. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:13, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I understand that Modern Japanese and Classical Japanese is not distinguished in the language headings. I wasn't making myself clear enough, but I intended to only talk about https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Japanese_verbs#k-irregular_(%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6%A0%BC_ka-gy%C5%8D_henkaku) part, which is listed under the "Modern Japanese" heading. I do understand that, in the actual 来る page, both the modern conjugation table and the classical conjugation table are given, and (aptly) the modern one only has 来い and the Classical has 来 and 来よ. I will edit the page based on our discussion. Hsjoihs (talk) 13:17, 23 February 2022 (UTC)