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Lesson 81: Global Principle of Word-Forms

[Video Link]

Today we're going to talk about something we've never talked about before, which is the overall, global, cosmic structure of Japanese.

We've touched on it in the past, but I've never talked before about its totality.

And there's a reason I didn't do that, which we'll come to in a minute.

What we're going to talk about starts out with something you already know about, which is the stem system.

If you've been following my lessons at all, you know that there is no conjugation in Japanese.

Verbs just make a small change to the one kana on the end, changing it from an u-row kana to one of the four other rows.

And then we attach various kinds of helpers, helper nouns, helper verbs, helper adjectives. But what I didn't explain at the time I introduced this is that it goes much further than this.

I left you thinking perhaps that the te-form, as it's called, and adjectives have some kind of a minor conjugation-thing happening that's a bit like European conjugation and the stuff the textbooks teach.

This isn't true. I didn't talk about it too much at the time because I think before you've ingested the basics properly it could be a bit complicated-feeling and hard to take in.

But now let's look at it properly.

As you know, there are two kinds of word in Japanese, and that is, active, changeable words and static words.

Active, changeable words consist of the three kinds of word that can make the engine of a sentence, that's to say, verbs, adjectives, and the copula.

Static words are nearly all nouns, and they never change at all. They can't change in any way.

Now, all the words that can change change in exactly the same way.

We have to know two things about them.

The first is that nothing changes in the base form of a word except the last kana.

That's the u-row kana in a verb or the i in an adjective.

Nothing before that can change.

That's as fixed and settled and inert as a noun.

It's only that last kana that can ever change and that can then have things attached to it.

The second thing to know is that they all change according to the stem-helper system.

So, although I introduced the te-form as if it was a "form", a kind of morphing or conjugation of the whole word, it is in fact a stem-helper system of its own.

In real Japanese grammar as taught to Japanese natives by Japanese natives, -ta and -te are regarded as helpers, as entities in themselves that attach to the stem of a word.

So essentially verbs have not one stem-system, but two stem-systems.

And that's partly why I didn't introduce it straight away, because that feels a bit overwhelming at first.

The second stem-system, that's the te-stem, you already know. We'll go over it briefly.

There's the u-tsu-ru group, and that changes the last kana, u, tsu or ru, into a small tsu, and then we can add the -ta or the -te.

There's the nu-bu-mu group: this changes the last kana, nu, mu or bu, into n, and the influence of the softness of those kana and of the n itself affects in a euphonic manner the -te or the -ta, turning them into -de or -da.

Ku and gu turn into i -- and we're going to notice in a minute that this relation between i and the ka-row kana, ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, is something that continues to play a role in adjectives.

We'll look at that in a minute.

Ku and gu turn into i, and in the case of gu, that ten-ten on the ku, that soft sound, again has a euphonic effect on the -te or -ta that follow it, turning them into -de or -da.

And finally, su in the te-form does exactly what it does in forming the i-stem in the regular stem system: it becomes shi.

So, there we have the second verb-stem system, the te-stem, and we use this not only for -te and -ta, but also to add helpers like the conditional -tara and -tari.

So what about adjectives?

Adjectives also have their own stem-system. Adjectives in fact have four stems.

You can form adjective stems by dropping the i, just as we drop the ru in ichidan verbs, or by changing that i to one of three ka-row kana, ka, ke or ku.

And as we said before, there's a relationship between ka-row kana and i, so with the te-stem of verbs, verbs ending in ku, the ki turns into i, and the same with the ten-ten version, gu.

So we have four stems for adjectives, dropping the i or turning it into ka, ke or ku.

The ku-stem attaches the -nai helper adjective, negativizing the adjective, and also if it stands on its own -- and as we know, stems sometimes can stand on their own.

So the i-stem of a verb on its own becomes a noun.

The e-stem on its own forms the imperative.

The ku-stem of an adjective on its own turns the adjective into an adverb.

So, we can say "hayai kuruma" (fast car) or "hayaku hashiru" (run fast).

And ku is also used, of course, to make the te-form: we just add -te to the end of the ku.

The ka-stem takes a small rider, which is the small tsu, so it becomes ka~ and we use that to attach the past-helper -ta, so we say -katta: "oishikatta" (that was delicious).

The ke-stem also takes a rider, which is -re so we have the stem -kere, and to that we attach the helper -ba, which is the conditional (and I made a whole set of videos on conditionals like -ba and -tara, and I'll put a link above and in the information section below).

When we drop the -i altogether we can use it for attaching things like the -sou helper noun, which means that something appears to have that quality, and also to attach helper verbs like -garu.

So to the stem of "hoshii" we can attach -garu to make "hoshigaru" (show signs of wanting something, appear to want something).

Or to the tai helper we can drop that i and attach -garu and get "tagaru" (show signs of wanting to do something, appear to want to do something).

So, as you see, adjectives have a stem-system of their own to which we attach a variety of helpers, like a smaller version of the one verbs have.

Now, what about the copula?

That's the other dynamic element, the other engine.

Now, the copula's only one kana to start with, so generally we add something to that.

We can add the small tsu, to make the stem da~, which can then have the -ta past helper added to it to make "datta".

We can add -ro, so it can have the volitional helper added to make "darou".

And in the te-form, the da itself changes -- of course having only one kana, da is the last kana -- and that can become "de" to make the te-form.

It's a little bit less regular than the others, but that's really because there is only one copula, so it doesn't have lots of other things in the same group for it to be regular with.

So, that's the overall structure of Japanese.

It has two kinds of words, active and passive words, transforming and inert words.

The inert words can't change in any way, but they can attach particles that tell us what they're doing.

And fortunately, because they never change at all, there's nothing tricky about nouns.

They always attach the same particle to do the same job regardless of what noun we're talking about.

Much simpler than foreign grammatical systems.

Active elements, verbs, adjectives and the copula, can only change that last kana and they always do it according to the stem-helper system.

When we understand that, the whole thing becomes a great deal easier to conceptualize and deal with.