Conjugatable words (verbs, i-adjectives, and na-adjectives) are traditionally considered to manifest in six available bases (活用形, katsuyōkei).[1] However, as a result of the language evolving,[2][3]historical sound shifts[4][5] and the post-WWII spelling reforms,[6] three additional sub-bases have emerged amongst verbs. Furthermore, verbs do not differentiate between the shūshikei and rentaikei bases (these bases are only distinguished in na-adjectives, see Japanese adjectives).[7][8] Verb bases function as the necessary intermediates for allowing inflectional suffixes to attach afterwards.
Verbs are named and listed in dictionaries according to their shūshikei/rentaikei bases, which is otherwise known as the dictionary form (辞書形, jishokei).[9] The verb group (godan, ichidan or irregular) determines how to derive any given base for the verb. With godan verbs, the base is derived by shifting the last kana along the respective vowel row of the gojūon kana table. With ichidan verbs, the base is derived by removing or replacing the る (ru) kana.[9]
The table below illustrates the various verb bases across the verb groups, with the patterns initiating from the dictionary form.[10]
[i]〜ろ (-ro) is used for the spoken imperative form, while 〜よ (-yo) is used for the written imperative form.[17]
[ii] The meaning of 未然形 (mizenkei), irrealis, originates from its archaic usage with the conditional 〜ば (-ba) suffix in Classical Japanese.[18] The conjugated forms in modern language, such as the passive and causative forms, do not invoke an irrealis mood but the term mizenkei was retained.
[iii] The mizenkei base for verbs ending in 〜う (-u) appears to be an exceptional case with the unexpected 〜わ (-wa). This realization of -wa is an artifact preserved from the archaic Japanese "-wu" verbs. In modern Japnese, original instances of consonant [w] have since been dropped before all vowels except [a].[19][20]
[iv] There are three mizenkei bases for the verb する (suru), depending on the resulting conjugated form: さ (sa) for passive and causative forms, し (shi) for the negative and volitional forms, and せ (se) for the negative continuative form.[21]する lacks a kanōkei base; instead, a suppletive ichidan verb できる (dekiru) is used as the potential form of する.[9][22]
Of the nine verb bases, the shūshikei/rentaikei, meireikei and ren'yōkei bases can be considered fully conjugated forms without needing to append inflectional suffixes. In particular, the shūshikei/rentaikei and meireikei bases do not conjugate with any inflectional suffixes. By contrast, a verb cannot be considered fully conjugated in its kateikei, mizenkei, izenkei, kanōkei, or onbinkei base alone; a compatible inflectional suffix is required for that verb to be grammatical.[23]
Certain inflectional suffixes, in themselves, take on the form of verbs or i-adjectives. These suffixes can then be further conjugated by adopting one of the verb bases, followed by the attachment of the appropriate suffix. As a result, the agglutinative nature of Japanese verb conjugation can make the final form of a given verb considerably long. For example, the word 食べさせられた (tabesaserareta) is broken down into its morphemes below:
As with all languages, the Japanese language has evolved to fulfil the contemporary needs of communication. The potential form of verbs is one such example; initially, prior to the emergence of the potential form, there was no direct way to express a capacity to perform an action. Eventually, as it became necessary to describe ability, the language aquired different ways to acheive this, including: new verbs that inherently convey ability, a new grammatical pattern (i.e. rentaikei base + -koto ga dekiru (〜ことができる)) and also via the kanōkei base.[2] The historical development of the kanōkei base is disputed, however the consensus is that it progressed from the mizenkei base.[3]
The mizenkei base, ending with -a, was also used to express the volitional mood for yodan verbs (四段動詞, yodan-dōshi, "Class-4 verbs") in archaic Japanese. However, the post-WWII spelling reforms gave rise to the ishikei base, ending with -o, for the volitional mood of yodan verbs. This resulted in a reclassification of "yodan verbs" to "godan verbs" (五段動詞, godan-dōshi, "Class-5 verbs").[6][14]
Whilst the Japanese language adapted, the ren'yōkei base sustained various euphonic changes specific to the perfective and te forms.[24][4][5] This allowed for an alternative version of the ren'yōkei base to emerge, known as the onbinkei base.[16] In the onbinkei base, the inflectional suffixes for godan verbs vary according to the last kana of the verb's ren'yōkei base.[9]
Banno, Eri; Ikeda, Yoko; Ohno, Yutaka; Shinagawa, Chikako; Tokashiki, Kyoko (2020). GENKI: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese I (3 ed.). Tokyo, Japan: The Japan Times. ISBN978-4-7890-1730-5.
Banno, Eri; Ikeda, Yoko; Ohno, Yutaka; Shinagawa, Chikako; Tokashiki, Kyoko (2020). GENKI: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese II (3 ed.). Tokyo, Japan: The Japan Times. ISBN978-4-7890-1732-9.
Kim, Tae (2017-10-16). "Polite Form and Verb Stems". Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese. Archived from the original on 2021-03-10. Retrieved 2021-05-04.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
Makino, Seiichi; Tsutsui, Michio (1989). A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (80 ed.). Tokyo, Japan: The Japan Times. ISBN978-47-89004-54-1.
Makino, Seiichi; Tsutsui, Michio (1995). A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar (50 ed.). Tokyo, Japan: The Japan Times. ISBN978-4-7890-0775-7.
McClain, Yoko (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: including lists of words and expressions with English equivalents for reading aid. Tokyo, Japan: The Hokuseido Press. ISBN4-590-00570-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
- The table came from the Japanese grammar article and readapted it for the Japanese verb congugation article. I took the imperative せい out because I wasn't able to check anywhere else stating that せい is used as an imperative for する.
-- I love the way you re-adapted it! It's so clear, I think people could quickly navigate to this page and find a quick answer to what they're looking for from this table. It also makes so much sense, like a condensed summary of the whole article itself, minus the suffixes. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
- The ren'yōkei stem form in the verb conjugation article is referred to as the "Conjunctive" form, while the Japanese grammar article and Wiktionary appendix on Japanese verbs refers to it as "Continuative" form. It might be better that to refer to it as the latter because the verb conjugation article mentions that the te form is said to function as a conjunction (plus the fact that the Wiktionary appendix calls the te form the "Conjunctive" form).
-- As for the "continuative form", I'm averse to this phrasing because it can be misconstrued as the "continuous tense". But as you say, the "conjunctive form" is also misleading, especially when the "te form" is contained within the same article. Furthermore, this form can exist standalone, without conjugating, which is contrary to its name.
You know, it's just dawned on me. The English language doesn't have a true comparison for this. Rather than tempt readers the opportunity of misconstruing the English term by jumping to an irrelevant conclusion from the English word, I think it's preferable to use the romanised Japanese word "Ren'yōkei" instead. It's for this same reason that I changed the terminology on Wikipedia to use "Godan" and "Ichidan" verbs.
If you agree, as for renaming the title of that section, should we retain Hepburn romanisation (with the awkward apostrophe) or abandon the apostrophe (as is done by the names of several Japanese train stations 123456789101112131415)? Regardless of the section title (which I'm impartial either way), all other references in the article should use the correct Hepburn transliteration. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
I commented about the idea of referring the stem forms at the very bottom of this comments section, so I think having it be called Ren'yōkei is fine. I guess it's up to preference whether to drop the apostrophe or not. Train station articles seem to drop the apostrophe (and even the vowel length symbol most of the time) because the English version of these station names—as they appear on the actual station—usually drop them as they don't transcribe the names that strictly according to Hepburn rules. By contrast, we have yet to see official reference to Ren'yōkei without the apostrophe. However, if dropping the apostrophe is fine within the standards of Wikipedia, then I'm not one to oppose. Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Let's keep the apostrophe, but I'll create an invisible # anchor to the romanised spelling without punctuation. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Writing the section on stem forms made me realize that two of the conjugated forms have not been included yet: the negative continuative form (irrealis + ず) and the written imperative form (the one that uses よ instead of ろ). Though the latter can easily be included as a simple addendum on the existing Imperative section. Both forms are included in mentioned article and appendix.
-- I read somewhere on the internet that there might be at least 154 "forms" that might exist, and that with the mizenkei form in particular, there might be 33 available suffixes for it. Unfortunately the internet is unreliable, and my books don't detail the subject so extensively. But I speculate that 〜ない and 〜ず are 2 of the 33 forms, would I be correct? If so, I'm weary of documenting too much on the page.
As for the imperative section, however, the aforementioned internet post claims that there are only 2 conjugations. It makes sense to include よ as the written imperative form, and I agree with your addendum idea.
Going back to the 〜ず, do you think it's worth mentioning? Are any of the other 31 suffixes also worth mentioning? Where do we draw the line of "too much information"? (You don't have to answer these questions, but I think this general idea might be worth further discussion to reach consensus). — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
I think you should take a look at the pdf of the book and check it out (I searched it out on google). It's not 33 suffixes (thankfully!), but rather 33 use cases of the mizenkei form, with a lot of them pertaining to 〜ない. Causative, passive, and causative-passive were mentioned as well. The 〜ず form in question appears in 3.8, alongside 〜ないで. Admittedly, the use case of this form is minor, which is to attach to the particle に mid-sentence to act as a negative conjunction like ないで does. I still think this is worth mentioning. Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Brilliant, thank you for this! As you said, the book indicates that it's mentioned alongside 〜ないで in conjunction with the に particle (this makes a lot of sense, the meanings overlap); however this information is incomplete. In the DIJG it clarifies that ず cannot terminate a sentence, and holds the "continuative form" unless followed by the particle に where its meaning changes to "without".[1] Since this (and that cheeky volitional) are the only non-ない suffixes, I agree that it should be included in the Negative section of the article. And thanks to that book you mentioned, we can finally add a new citation that hasn't already been used. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Admittedly, I use the word "stem form" by influence of the Japanese grammar article, though it can be confusing as it is yet another name that can be used to refer to ren'yōkei. But I really don't think there's such thing as a good name to call the six katsuyōkei. Wiktionary translates it as "inflected form", but I'm not too sure. Since "stem form" works on Wikipedia, that's gonna be my go-to thus far.
-- Since some variety of sources refer to the ren'yōkei form as the "the stem form", I'm averse to this exact name. However, would you consider the similar word "formations"? The pluralisation would make it distinct from any single form, and the variance on the word might be enough to avoid confusion. Other candidates could include "Stem categories", "Stem classes", "Stem classifications" or "Stem constructions". Whatever we choose doesn't have to be a literal translation or the defacto usage on Wikipedia, but it should add clarity—not confusion— to the article itself. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Out of the candidate names for it, I find "Stem classes" to be the best. That way, we can call them "mizenkei class", "kateikei class", etc. All the other ones would be too long, wouldn't you think? Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Love it, let's do it. In this way, the article can more clearly separate "verb stems" from "verb functions/semantics". — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- The table may need bolding or some other formatting to indicate how stem forms are being derived, though I'm not sure how to go about doing that.
-- If you have any ideas, go for it. I think I have some ideas. It's a delicate task, because adding information increases complexity, but the goal is for it to be simple to acquire the information.
About the verbs in the table, I don't love the idea of having 切る and 来る in the same table. But I see you've used the same verbs from the "Verb groups" section for consistency. Hmm. (I intentionally used different words in the "Verb groups" section to avoid doubling-up on identical conjugations in the same article, and to give a small window of opportunity of exposure to more vocabulary.)
Since する and 来る must be included, I suggest we use the same verbs used in the conjugation sections of the article. i.e. 言う、作る、見る、始める. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
I admit that I took 切る and 止める from the table in the Verb groups section of the verb conjugation article and did not catch that oversight of 切る and 来る, haha! Definitely, the verbs you suggested would be much better! (Dang it, I knew I should have kept 見る there!) Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
I've edited the table to contain the verbs that you mentioned, plus lessened the amount of footnotes. So the floor's all yours to apply the ideas you have! Excusememoi (talk) 03:42, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Hahaha! Welcome back to the club 見る, we missed you. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- Also the infinitive/terminal/attributive/imperfective forms... there are just so many names for everything! I'm not too fond on calling it "infinitive" as it doesn't syntactically act as one. I think we'll definitely keep imperfective there, since it lets you know that it works to mark the non-past tense.
-- Since the terminal/attributive forms relate to specific grammatical use-cases using the identical formation, I'm averse to using those specific terms. The imperfective is a good compromise, I think. However, my favourite is indeed the infinitive. Could you elaborate on how this term isn't appropriate? It seems to fit the definitions of "infinitive" perfectly (Oxford Dictionary: "infinitive (noun): the basic form of a verb, without an inflection binding it to a particular subject or tense", "infinitive (adjective): having or involving the basic form of a verb").Edit: Never mind, I got confused and thought you meant something else. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I find it so weird that some of the katsuyōkei relate to semantic function ("irrealis", "imperative", and "hypothetical"), while others are relate to syntactic function ("terminal", "attributive", and "continuative"). Alas, I'll deter to my reply to the bottom comment which also concerns the terminal and attributive forms. Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- The number of footnotes in the table are a little overwhelming. Perhaps, rather than footnotes, you could merge the footnotes into a single paragraph about the mizenkei form. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:45, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
I know it would be too much, haha. I'll try to do something about it. Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- As mentioned in the article, the translation "irrealis" would be considered a misnomer by modern standards. I don't think it's necessary to preserve the translation "irrealis" on the basis that Japanese grammar preserved the word 未然形. We shouldn't really translate it as the "〜ない stem" either, since the mizenkei form might be the stem of a potential 33 suffixes, including ず. I'm going to propose that we simply use the Japanese word "mizenkei", and include somewhere '(also known as "irrealis" and "nai stem")'. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:45, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
I like the idea of using the romanized name! More on that on the bottom reply! Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I read a criticism about the post-WWII spelling reforms in the Japanese parliament archive. To quote a sentence: 『「行か」は「行く」の未然形で、それに接続する「う」は、はじめて助動詞となり合理的な説明がつく』 ("For the first time, 行か, the mizenkei form of "行く", can attach "う" as an auxiliary verb to deduce it's meaning."). This is interesting because on this account "〜う" is an auxiliary verb for the explicit purpose of being the volitional (意志形, ishikei) form.
What isn't clear, however, is how godan verbs 〜アう becomes 〜オう... euphonics, perhaps? Onbin? I can't see any explanation or rule for when godan verbs assume the アー未然形 or the オー未然形 pattern. As far as I'm aware, is the オー未然形 pattern exclusive to the volitional ishikei form? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:44, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Ahh, you see... you know how Western grammar treats ない, れる・られる, う・よう, etc. as "inflectional suffixes"? In Japanese school grammar, they treat them as "auxiliary verbs" (jodōshi). To them, verb conjugation is just getting the right stem form/class of a given verb, and then you just "add an auxiliary verb" to it. Also, what we call "auxiliary verb" for verbs that attach to the te form and ren'yōkei, Japanese school grammar calls them supplementary verbs (補助動詞, hojodōshi). I like this type of thinking about Japanese verbs, but I'm afraid the Western approach thinks otherwise.
Onbin is the likely explanation, as historically, あう sounds had been merging with おう. Ever since the spelling reform, this is why you see a lot of ō and never au in on-readings of Kanji nowadays. Volitional form fell victim to the merger, but not imperfective form. As a result, the original アー未然形 is no longer compatible with the volitional form, giving birth to オー未然形. In fact, it's because of this new オー未然形 that godan verbs are called "godan" (5); back then they were "yodan" (4) verbs. You can also assume that onbin affected the ichidan verbs as well—not their stem form/class, but the once 〜やう suffix that turned into 〜よう. Man, the volitional form is such a troublemaker! Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Ahh, that makes sense. You're a legend. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- As for the "6" forms, apparently this is contentious, and it's apparent why. It feels as though there are more exceptions than there are rules, resulting from a rapidly evolving language and trying to shoehorn modern linguistics into the elegant system of long-gone past. No wonder this was confusing when you first encountered these concepts; you've guided me into a rabbit hole that's just getting deeper and deeper, omg! Given all of this, I think it's important to not get too detailed, but reveal clarity on this topic. Rather than being true to the old terminologies, I think we should focus on making the article relevant for learners of modern Japanese. どうしようかな？ Hmm.
This article isn't about adjectives, so the differences with the terminal/attributive forms are irrelevant to verbs, so I vote to use the terminology "Imperfective" as one of the Stem forms.
The continuative form could be changed to "Ren'yōkei".
The hypothetical can stay the same, its meaning is unambiguous.
The imperative can stay the same, its meaning is unambiguous.
The mizenkei form should drop the wording "irrealis" and be changed to "Mizenkei"
The perfective/te forms don't share their stem pattern with any of the "6" 活用形 (katsuyōkei) (although the footnote seems to imply it's a subset of the Ren'yōkei, somehow). Do you know if there's a definitive term for the stem form of the perfective/te forms? This specific te-form topic seems very difficult to find answers to. I know the perfective/te stems aren't one of the "official 6", but we can highlight this column in the table as a noteworthy deviation in the evolution of the language or something.
I don't know how to think about having some stem forms remain romanized while others are translated into English. I'm onto the idea of writing have the name of the forms translated just once (on the table), and then primarily referring to the stem forms by their romanized name, assuming that readers won't be overwhelmed by the amount of romanized terminology in the article (that's also the approximate approach that the Wiktionary appendix on Japanese verbs took).
I'm torn on the idea of merging the terminal and attributive forms, because the stem form system was meant to be compatible across all conjugatable words, and merging the two stem forms would make the system incompatible to na-adjectives. What's more, if we're going with the approach that we're referring stem forms by their romanization, what's a good word to replace "Imperfective" with if you planned to merge terminal/attributive forms in to one form? 辞書形 (katsuyōkei, dictionary form)?
For the stem form pertaining to the te and perfective forms, there are a couple options. The Japanese grammar page considers it as ren'yōkei/continuative and describes the formation of the te form as "cont. + te", with a footnote stating that the form changes for godan verbs based on euphony. The Wiktionary appendix lists it as a separate stem form called "onbin form". But now you see what I meant when I said that the principles of stem forms are bit outdated. Instead of having six of these forms, you technically have eight (if you count オー未然形 separately).
I wanted to put this onbin form on the table (maybe on the same row as the "continuative form"?), but do remember what this would imply. The form varies depending on the last kana of the godan verb. Instead of using two godan verbs to illustrate the stem forms, I would end up using nine godan verbs that carry different final kana just for the onbin form. There's also the complication that the onbin form affects the voicing of the suffix, which is hard to convey on the table. That's why I left out this form and set a footnote on it. I think the info should already have been succinctly covered in the conjugation tables for the perfective and te forms. But I don't know, should I make a huge table to include this form? Excusememoi (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
I realized midway through editing the section that if we're going to be using words like "mizenkei form", it sounds rather tautologous, since it technically translates as "irrealis form form". And it's not much better with "mizenkei class" ("irrealis form class"). But it shouldn't be a problem, right? After all, tautology is found everywhere! Excusememoi (talk) 03:37, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
You're right. In suggesting the "solution" of using romanised stem forms, I introduced the problem of inconsistency. I like your solution (all romanised, "translated" just once).
You're right again about merging the terminal and attributive forms. I've realised that maybe the best solution after all might be to preserve the English "Imperfective" as reference to its function/meaning, but preserve the shūshikei and rentaikei when referring to "Stem classes". Also, I think the way you presented those rows in the table is a work of art, it's perfect.
I believe it's best to take the "there are 8 stem classes" approach. In the table, we should introduce the volitional as a sub-class of the mizenkei, and we should introduce the "onbin form" as a sub-class of the ren'yōkei. The ordering of the table need not respect the "a-i-u-e-o" order, since that's already been illustrated in the "Verb groups" section. Edit: ,and also these are stem classes, which don't necessarily in themselves end with a kana from those rows without an inflectional suffix.
Regarding the onbin form, I did actually consider the implications of this, but actually we can do something revolutionary to bypass this problem. We can treat the ta form and the te form as having inflectional suffixes in the article, whilst the "onbin stem" remains the same. And what is the pattern exactly? Remove the final kana. We can explain that the inflectional suffix is determined by the removed kana. What do you think?
Hahaha, I noticed that too! As for the tautology, I think it should be overlooked. As you said, it happens all the time, but especially when English overlaps with other languages. I genuinely think the tautological phrasing will make the article easier to understand the meanings of the loan words we're using. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
- I went ahead and edited the table with the ideas I had in mind. Extraordinarily, the word 音便形 (onbinkei) is an actual word in the dictionary,[2] that refers to the stem form of the た and て suffixes. What a happy miracle! There's also a small section about it in Japanese Wikipedia. I'll stop editing now. But if you like the table and the propositions I mentioned in my most recent comments (stamped "04:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)" on this page), the rest of the article needs accommodating (e.g. an explanation as to why there's 8 classes rather than 6, adopting the romanised terminology, anything else you deem appropriate). Cheers! JKVeganAbroad (talk) 09:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
(I'll make one huge comment here to reply to the comments made since my last.)
I was so amazed upon seeing that edited table! It looks so nice and organized, and it even has the romanised name of the stem classes up front (which was something I had been trying to do but failed)! Your take on the onbinkei class (which thank goodness that's an actual name!) is rather unorthodox as it considers the kana before て・で in te form not as part of the stem class, but as part of the inflectional suffix. This, to me, is actually pretty clever and I definitely think we can keep it like that! Even then, I should have seen this coming because I did notice that you took that exact approach when I saw the conjugation table for the te and perfective forms. Alas, that slipped my mind. Having the te form be analysed like that reminded me of the te form song. If you look up such a video on YouTube (or if you're already aware of the song), I think you'll be able to see why.
I made the attempt to fully adopt the romanisation (and failed) as well as edited the table (more on that near the end) before having to head out for the day. After returning back home, I tweaked the introduction to the section to acknowledge the two other stem classes and did the rest of the romanisation, so that should be all good. When it gets to the actual article, I'll spruce up the article with rewording of the paragraph right before the conjugation tables, among some other needed edits.
As for the ず form, I'm pleased that it gets to be acknowledged in the article! Very sorry in advance that this results in putting you into more work than you'd expect during the development of the stem classes section, but I entrust you with adding the ず form.
There is also a couple more things about the table. I went ahead to edit it (before going out) so that it non-godan verbs span the entire mizenkei row and ren'yōkei row to indicate that they're not affected by the respective splits. Hopefully that's OK with you. Also, I'm not entirely keen on having explanations for the derivation of stem classes for irregular verbs on the table. It makes it seem like there's a consistent rule behind, for example, changing くる to き in ren'yōkei class, when there's really not (hence they're called irregular verbs). I'm more onto the idea of leaving the explanations blank for irregular verbs, which can suggest that the stem classes for these verbs are better left memorized, though I'd like to know what your thoughts are on that.
Besides this, I believe we're at an incredibly great track to putting the section up on the article! We just need to make everything runs fine with it before we're ready to do so. :) Excusememoi (talk) 05:24, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
I love how you spanned the mizenkei and ren'yōkei rows! It's brilliant, makes perfect sense! Not only does it show they're unaffected by the divergence, but it's respectful to where the newer forms came from. Thank you!
Oh you're right! The te form table patterns DO resemble te form song! Now I'm wondering if the te form song could be mentioned in the article somehow! 😂
I completely agree about removing the non-existant "patterns" for irregular verbs. However, and I'll edit the column as such now, I'm not so comfortable with the lack of phonetic symbolism for 来る, so I'll propose using ヒラガナ for that column.
I made some edits to the passages, are they okay?
There's another point to discuss, it's about the "Conjunctive form". I've read some more information, and I think the terminology should remain in the article (though not in the Stem class section). Aside from being called the "Conjunctive form" in that book you recommended to me, the DIJG has a surprisingly detailed section on this verb stem acting as the conjunctive "and". It even compares it to the te form "and" whilst explaining the difference in nuance: て shows a stronger connection between verbs, whereas the conjunctive form distances this connection, or talks about unrelated things. For example: 「 彼らは日本で生まれ、11才まで日本の学校で勉強した。」 ("They were born in Japan and studied at a Japanese school until they were 11 years old.")
Here, the te form of "born and" is unnatural because birth is largely unrelated to studying, they're separated events, although their timelines may overlap (i.e. "in Japan").
Furthermore, there's a stylistic means of using the conjunctive form in tandem with the te form when somebody is listing a large sequence of events (to avoid て…て…て…て… sounds, much like how we might avoid saying "and and and and"). Another situation where the te form is inappropriate if when you use verbs of opposite "controllable/uncontrollable" categories; the te form can only be used for pairs of verbs that are both controllable or both uncontrollable, whereas the conjunctive form is appropriate when they contrast.[3]
I'm not sure if you were familiar with this information, but I think it's important enough to merit mentioning in the article. Conveniently the te form and conjunction forms are beside each other in the article, so the progression would appear logical. Inconveniently, technically the te form is a subset of the conjunctive form, so the opposite order might also be a preferable candidate (although I'm willing to ignore this aspect). There do appear to be complex rules permitting the usage of the conjunctive form (despite its name), so I should probably document it in the "Grammatical compatibility" section.
What do you think about this case? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 07:09, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
Your edits to the passage are much needed! You worded the descriptions better than I could ever achieve, and I like the new order that they go in! Thanks so much for that!
I'm glad we're on par with removing the patterns for irregular verbs. I also edited the table so that the stem classes of 来る are written in all 平仮名.
You did provide some insightful points about the conjunctive form and te form. I was certainly not aware of such nuances between their uses as conjunctions; this is definitely something I believe would be worth mentioning in the article. However, I wouldn't worry about as to whether te form or conjunctive form should appear first. I think the order is fine as it is. Remember, the te form is not really a subset of the conjunctive form: they are two different fully conjugated forms, albeit one of them takes the form of a stem class.
As for the Japanese names of the conjugated forms, I think we'll have the conjunctive form and ren'yōkei class share the same Japanese name. Same goes for the imperative form and meireikei class as well as the imperfective form and shūshikei/rentaikei class (or dictionary form?). However, the Japanese names for the negative form and conditional form will have to be changed since they don't equate to mizenkei and kateikei classes. Any thoughts?
I also noticed that you italicised the "shūshikei" and "rentaikei" classes in the first paragraph. Is italicising the romanised stem classes more preferrable with you? For me I don't mind it either way.
I barely did further editing today because the section is becoming so robust. I guess we still need to consider an action plan to get the section up on the page and to apply edits to the rest of the article afterwards. Thanks once again for the help! Excusememoi (talk) 03:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
Also, I just made another table and I would like to hear your thoughts on it. Keep it? Scrap it? Further edits to it is all yours! Edit: Come to think of it, I should have used a godan verb to illustrate this so that it's not riddled with ichidan components... Excusememoi (talk) 04:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
Alright, I tidied up the "derivatives" subsection and added a column to the stem classes table that links to the "forms/semantic functions" within the article, as derivatives from the stem classes; on this note, I didn't include the "Potential form" because I didn't want to guess which stem class it's derivative from (so I'm relying on you to decide on that one). I also inverted your supplementary table along the x=y axis to better illustrate the verb as the sum-of-its-parts. This table is a great idea, it shows an interesting feature of the language. By the way, I actually disagree with you; I think an ichidan verb example is the simplest, least complicated way to convey the concept of agglutination. I wouldn't change it at all!
I agree that the section is almost ready to be merged with the article, but I have one big reservation: citations. We need them. The article has plenty of citations on the final conjugated forms, but I don't have any resources that explain the original 6 stem classes. If we have that, then we have the perfect foundation that the article needs. This is the next step, I think. Are you able to trace back to where you learned about the 6 forms? If not, we might have to do some more research to find citations first. 😬
As for the nomenclature, I think we're in disagreement at this point. In the stem classes table, I love the paradigm of "official Japanese stem classes" on the left side, and "English function" on the right side. With the exception of the te-form itself, I don't think the English terminology is misleading or incorrect. If we changed these "forms" to use the Japanese names, the article would become difficult for people who want a quick answer to things like "What's the negative form of Godan verbs? / What's the conditional form for Ichidan verbs? / etc." — instead, the table-of-contents would be filled with alien-titles like "Mizenkei form" or "Kateikei form". The translation doesn't have to be perfect for the final forms, although I the language should remain true-to-Japanese for the foundation/intermediate steps (i.e. when referring to the nuance of the verb stem / stem class without analysing the semantics). We don't really have terminology for intermediate precursors to inflected words in English, so romanised Japanese is the only choice we have without inventing new words to explain abstract alien ideas. In other words, we should use romanised Japanese for syntactics and English approximations for semantics. Does this make sense?
Cheers, we're nearly there! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 17:42, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
| (so I'm relying on you to decide on that one)
Oh dear. That column was something I had thought making some time ago, and the potential form was the sole reason why I decided not to add such a column to the table. But now that it's there, I'm afraid that's yours to decide what to do with it. 😁
As for the additional table, I'm you liked the addition! And you're right, keeping it simple is better. I just thought that I didn't add enough variety to my choice of long verb. I also like that you made the table more horizontally, since how's how the word is written. But this table does leave me wanting an explanation. First, why does the second column consist of "させ sase" above "Mizenkei class of 食べる taberu"? Is it because させる attaches to the mizenkei class of the left verb? If I didn't know Japanese conjugation this much, I don't think I'd be able to make that connection. Second, the word "Morpheme" is used to mean "smallest meaningful unit in a language", which I used to identify the four components of the verb 食べさせられた, not just 食べ. Since it appears that the bottom row is used to identify the morpheme's meaning/function, I think the space that "Morpheme" occupies should have read "to eat" or "verb stem", though I'm not quite sure. Also, my source for inspiration to make the table came from the wiki article on the Inuktitut language (it's the table on the section about Grammar).
Ahh great, citations! Truth be told, I can certainly tell where I learned about the 6 forms, but I don't know if they can be used as references. The Japanese grammar article on Wikipedia was the one that got me to understand the stem classes. Also, when I look up Japanese words on Wiktionary, if it's a verb, the entry will have a neat table that shows all its stem classes, followed by fully conjugated forms. (Here's the entry for 来る). The top of the table also links to the appendix on Japanese verbs. That's why I figured to base the stem classes off of what already exists in interwiki. Japanese Wikipedia also has an article on which lists out the six stem classes of Japanese verbs. One thing I was not sure of is what English Wikipedia's stance is on using related interwiki pages to justify the additional content for the article we're working on. If we really do need a reliable source, there's likely something published in Japanese that describes the six stem classes... but I don't know the language well enough to understand a single paragraph, let alone a finished work. Oof, what a bind.
I don't think we're in disagreement with the nomenclature, though it definitely needs discussion. I believe I didn't convey the message coherently. I'm all for using English for the fully conjugated forms (now dubbed "English functions"?), and that includes the three functions that equate to four of the stem classes. When I said "Japanese names for the conjugated forms", I meant the translations that you provided after every conjugated form at the start of their respective sections. For example, the start of the section titled "Negative" reads: 「The negative form (未然形, mizenkei) is broadly equivalent to the English word "not".」 It's the "未然形" I'm concerned about. Since "mizenkei" is already going to be used to describe a stem class, it won't be appropriate to apply the same term for a conjugated form that consists of the mizenkei class plus the additional ない suffix. The same goes for the Volitional and Conditional sections. I guess you can use "已然形" (izenkei) for that the Conditional section, but I'll have to warn you: 已然形 describes an older stem class that's relevant to Classical Japanese, and it means "realis" (like, opposite to 未然形). Actually, come to think of it, I don't know how you got the Japanese names for the conjugated forms that use inflectional suffixes. The idea of conjugated forms in Japanese verb conjugation is taken from modern linguistic analysis, which really has no equivalence in Japanese school grammar, so it wouldn't make sense that there are Japanese names for these conjugated forms. It's the same how there are no good English names to refer to those intermediate precursors as you said, because katsuyōkei is a product of Japanese school grammar. In order to derive Japanese names for these conjugated forms, I imagine that you would have to look at either a Japanese material that follows modern linguistic analysis, or a reliable English material that provides self-coined Japanese translations for the conjugated forms, if you happen to have one at possession. Otherwise, keeping the English names of these semantic functions/conjugated forms while dropping the Japanese translations entirely can be an option. What we're writing is supposed to cater to English readers, after all.
There was also something I had noticed. When I was looking at stem classes on Japanese Wikipedia, I noticed that each of them had an interlanguage link to the Japanese verb conjugation article, and I was so confused because stem classes have yet to be mentioned in that article. What's even more confusing is that the interlanguage links were added by you. I assumed that you spent a bit of time exploring through Japanese Wikipedia for the purpose of the Japanese verb conjugation article, and that you know enough Japanese to make sense and even edit content in Japanese Wikipedia. But at the same time, you didn't recognize the usage of 終止形, 仮定形, 未然形, etc as stem classes prior to our encounter. That must have resulted in a lot of confusion during the overhaul of the article! I hope our encounter since then has deepened and continues to deepen your understanding and appreciation of Japanese verbs.
Very sorry that this is such a long reply. I just thought a lot about this and I hope what I said makes sense despite all the terminology. I'll attempt to say something funny to make up for it. Today I read a comment about Japanese verbs in an English-speaking forum posted long ago, and this user was mentioning the ren'yōkei stem class. The thing is, they mentioned it as "連用系", and my initial reaction just went 'wait... that doesn't look riiiight...... OMG THEY USED THE WRONG KEI. 🤣🤣🤣' And it was so apparent because I speak a Chinese variety—系 and 形 have completely different pronunciations! The amount of homophones in kanji amaze me to no end. Excusememoi (talk) 05:02, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
You basically started out saying "I don't know how you got the Japanese names for the conjugated forms" but then concluded with "you didn't recognize the usage of 終止形, 仮定形, 未然形, etc as stem classes prior to our encounter"… So… I don't think you're confused at all, your speculation is exactly what happened. Hahaha! This is yet even more testimony to the fact that this section is so important. You're a beacon of clarity in a previously inaccessible function of Japanese grammar. Japanese doesn't have to be so obscure.
So, with that in mind: Absolutely, these factual errors (i.e. "The negative form (未然形, mizenkei) is…") and all the others) absolutely need to be removed and corrected in tandem with adding the new Stem classes section. Actually it was so obvious after all of our discussions and this new information, that I assumed that's to what you referred to when you previously mentioned "…I'll spruce up the article with rewording of the paragraph right before the conjugation tables, among some other needed edits." Thank you for clarifying, I completely agree.
Regarding the interwiki links I added to Japanese Wikipedia — and I'll be clear on this — at the time with the translation dictionaries I was using, my perception of the stem classes was that they were the final-fully fledged forms with the suffixes, and the Japanese Wikipedia was just weirdly omitting the suffixes. But now, thanks to you, the major gaping hole in this mystery is patched. When the edits are completed, we should relocate the anchors for the stem classes to the Stem classes section, so that Japanese Wikipedia points to the correct section of the article. We won't even have to edit Japanese Wikipedia to do this, which is an excellent advantage for my using kanji anchors rather than pointing to "Imperfective/Negative/etc." (thank you, past me, I appreciate this!).
Citations: That you found this information on Wikipedia and Wiktionary provides hope that those sections were cited, so we can verify (to the extent we can) those citations and transfer them into this section. Probably somebody did the hard work for us.
I'm not sure I have time until Sunday, but feel free to give it a go.
Oh, and about the morpheme table: Yup, that makes sense. I've proposed another modification, which I hope addresses your concerns.
I'm such a dork, I'm obsessively excited by all this. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 14:34, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The modification to the morpheme table was definitely an improvement. However, I'm not so clear on two of the cells: "Ren'yōkei class of the られる (rareru) suffix" and "Inflectional suffix of the onbinkei class". If the latter cell is taken to mean "Inflectional suffix that attaches to the onbinkei class of the previous morpheme", it would seem to contradict the former cell as it describes られ as being in the ren'yōkei class. I'd like some clarification on this.
I unfortunately didn't have as much time as I'd like to have today to work on this section (it's late at night as I type this). But I hope I'll have more time tomorrow to find materials to cite. Unfortunately, these wiki pages don't have a lot of citations, so I'm afraid we'll have to dig deeper.
Aside from that, I'm getting quite nervous anticipating the day this section gets up on the actual article! We've made great strides this far! Excusememoi (talk) 05:44, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
I searched through my university's online library and came across a book that goes by a really long name.[4] In it, the Japanese names for the stem classes were mentioned, referred to as "verb bases" (funny enough, The Handbook of Japanese Verbs also calls them "bases") and sometimes "forms". She acknowledges that she presented the verb bases differently from that of traditional Japanese grammar "in order to facilitate the student's learning". What she did was to consider "終止形" and "連体形" as one base: the Third Base, and added an additional base as a Sixth Base, dubbed as 推量計 (suiryōkei) in Japanese, which is equivalent to our ishikei class. She did acknowledge that the volitional form was considered to be formed from the mizekei class in traditional Japanese grammar, and that "it seems easier for students to remember this form [the Sixth Base] if it is separated from the First Base [未然形] and defined as a new base." The rest of the bases were translated with the exact same Japanese names according to traditional Japanese grammar. She also applied English translations to these bases which are mostly different from our English translations (for example, she called 終止形 "Conclusive base"), but she acknowledged these translations to be arbitrary, so these English terms can totally be overlooked. Hopefully this material is OK as a citation for this section. I'm not sure if you're able to access this book. This is where instant, private forms of communication would have been useful, so that I can share the info instead of passing the info off by word. Furthermore, I'm aware that you mentioned citations in plural, so I'm guessing one is not enough. But since you only mentioned that we needed something to "explain the original 6 stem classes" and the book I mentioned seems to do the job, do let me know if we still needed citations for other aspects of stem classes. Also, I also don't know if I did this citation thing right, so forgive me if I made mistakes trying to cite that book. 😬 Excusememoi (talk) 02:56, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
Brilliant, thank you for finding a marvelous citation and researching the library! I'll respond backwards:
…I'm aware that you mentioned citations in plural… — This means we should use inline citations where possible, and the same section/article can cite the same source multiple times if appropriate. Since it's a book though, it's better to reference the specific chapter/subheading. Your citation looks great, I've only added a unique identifier to the <ref> tag, so that we can recycle the citation elsewhere on the same page (like here[4], here[4] and here[4]). I suspect this book that you've found should be satisfactory enough to complete the section.
…stem classes were mentioned, referred to as "verb bases"… — I like this terminology. Shall we abandon "classes" in favor of "bases"? However, referring to bases by ordinal numbers doesn't seem helpful.
…contradict the former cell as it describes られ as being in the ren'yōkei class… — I'm comfortable with this being changed to say the "onbinkei class" instead; or we could add a sentence of clarification after the table.
I forgot to acknowledge your anecdote! It was funny! The joys of being multilingual, many people wouldn't understand! 😂 JKVeganAbroad (talk) 12:48, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
PS. I'm very happy you changed the "dictionary form" kanji.
PPS. Does that library book have an answer about the stem base for the "Potential form"? 😭
Thanks for the adding the identifier; that looks really useful! I added a chapter to the citation.
I happen to like the "base" terminology as well! I'm torn between "verb bases" and "stem bases". If you have a preference for which one, by all means! And of course we won't adopt ordinal numbering of bases—the order we have them appear on the first table goes against the traditional ordering anyway.
I made an additional edit to the morpheme table, though I'm not sure what sentence of clarification you're looking for.
I don't know why I made that mistake for the Japanese word for "dictionary form" (both kanji AND romanisation) and why I didn't catch that mistake sooner, but I'm glad I did!
I checked the book again for the potential form. I'm guessing you want to know about godan verbs. The book made a note under the れる suffix mentioning that the potential form for godan verbs is different from れる suffix (alluding to an earlier entry for られる, where it's used for both passive and potential; the section talks about the usage of the "First Base" (mizenkei)), and it just lists example godan verbs in the potential form without explaining how it's derived. ば seems to be only suffix used by the "Fourth Base" (kateikei). The Handbook of Japanese Verbs (that pdf file from earlier) did make a mention that the potential form "is made by adding -ru to the stem of the conditional form (4th base) of regular I [godan] verbs" on page 31, which is the current approach taken in Wikipedia. Though, I have a feeling you're catching on to something about the potential form… 🤔 Excusememoi (talk) 03:46, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for adding in the chapter! I noticed that citation was only 2 pages long; for the purpose of inline-citations, what content on our page can those pages validate? Is the chapter on "verbs" only 2 pages long, or is it divided into sub-headings? If it is divided into subheadings, we can duplicate the reference by ammending the code, for example: |chapter=Verbs: Verb bases or |chapter=Verbs: Mizenkei base. In turn, we change the page numbers to include the start-to-finish of the subsection, rather than the page range of the whole chapter.
I found an citation for the potential form, open to the web: [5] This source is very interesting. I used some website to use optical character recognition (OCR) to make the scanned PDF searchable, which made it easier for me to read with translation tools. It documents short history of the potential form and the periods of their usage. It started with ① the ren'yōkei base with either the うる or える inflectional suffixes. Then it changed to ② the mizenkei base with the れる or られる inflectional suffixes. Then ③ some verbs emerged with the potential property implied in the meaning. Then ④ a trend of nominalizing rentaikei base verbs with ことが and appending できる afterwards.
To be honest, it's a bit hard to get my head around, but I think it has the information we need for making a decision. I have a hunch the current "potential form" is a modernisation of the original mizenkei form. I speculate that the final godan kana underwent euphonic fusion with the れ in れる, contracting into the what we know today (e.g. 探す → 探される [archaic potential] → 探せる, the sa + re contracts into se). The problems with this speculation are: Why didn't this same euphonic trend occur to the passive form? Is there a citation that actually validates my euphonic fusion hunch?
Perhaps you can make more sense of the citation I provided. [5] I'll try again later, but I have to go somewhere right now.
Good luck! It's fun! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 04:23, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
Ooooooh! That paper had some very interesting insights! Importantly, it literally stated word-for-word 「…五段動詞未然形+reru…」 ("…godan verbs use the mizenkei base plus 'reru'…") then …音変化(融合)で… (…onhenka (yūgō) de…, "…by phonetic change (fusion)…").[5] So that's reassuring!
Also, now that I have the appropriate kanji for "fusion", I was able to find this newer article: [6]
I look forward to reading through this one, but the final page has a brief summary of the journal article in English, which is convenient too. Check it out! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 13:46, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
The two pages of that citation show basically what I had initially described (meaning, not including what I mentioned about the potential form). Basically, she included Japanese names of the six traditional verb bases, and that traditional Japanese grammar treats the volitional form as being derived from 未然形. To quote the latter, I present the entire paragraph about her Sixth Base: "In traditional Japanese grammar, the tentative verb [volitional form] was formed from the First Base. However, with the use of the new kanazukai [kana usage] since 1946 [alludes to post-WWII spelling reforms], it seems easier for students to remember this form if it is separated from the First Base and defined as a new base." The chapter and subheadings in this book are really hard to describe (the table of contents spans eight pages!), so here's a screencap of the first page of the table of contents. The entire chapter on Verbs spans from page 3 to page 37, but the info I described to you is found under the "Conjugations of Japanese Verbs" and "Functions of Six Bases" subheadings (pages 5-6). Hopefully this is useful for citing the section.
Yep, I knew you were going to go on a deep dive in the godan potential form. It's a really weird conjugated form! I would have been so convinced that the modern potential form was some thing like a contraction of ren'yōkei + 得る, but so is a contraction of mizenkei + れる. After all, contraction of mizenkei + られる is used colloquially as a potential form in ichidan verbs in Modern Japanese. Maybe the passive and potential forms were one and the same and that the contraction occured in godan verbs way earlier than in ichidan verbs? However, the newer article you provided seems to favour a third theory, which is really hard to get my head across since it concerns Classical Japanese. Something about 切るる becoming 切れる (from the English abstract)? This is such a mystery! It doesn't seem like there's a common ground for the exact evolutionary morphology of the godan potential form.
Is the evolutionary history of the potential form worth including in Japanese verb conjugation article? Because I don't know how to approach this topic in a way that doesn't intimidate readers who are looking to conjugate the potential form. However, I do admire your interest in learning about this. It wasn't that long ago that you were introduced to Japanese verb bases, and now you're applying the knowledge of verb bases to learn more about what's actually going on with the potential form. That just makes me so happy! Excusememoi (talk) 04:24, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
I noticed that there are a lot of "citation needed", which appears after almost every sentence. I didn't expect that we'd have to cite that heavily, and it makes me feel pretty overwhelmed. I don't feel like we're mentioning that many materials that could be challenged. However, it's gonna be pretty hard to find a citation for the analysis of the onbinkei base's derivation, as "Remove the 〜〇 kana" is mostly an analysis you came up with. The っ in 言って is mainly thought as changing the い ending of the ren'yōkei base to っ (resulting in the 言っ onbinkei base), and that て is used as the inflectional suffix to make the te form 言って. Even though I like the idea of っ being analysed as part of the inflectional suffix rather than being part of the onbinkei base, I doubt that we'll be able to find a verifiable citation that follows this analysis.
Thanks so much for your continuing efforts to contribute to the article section! I'm kinda at a loss for what to do at this point regarding all the "citation needed", since you mentioned that a lot of the citations are found in the main article. I'm such a novice at Wikipedia editing—I'm very sorry for the inconvenience! Excusememoi (talk) 04:21, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Sorry to overwhelm you!
We absolutely don't need to cite every sentence, in the way I've implied. Probably most of the content in a paragraph can be cited from a single source at the end of the paragraph. Furthermore, I intend to transfer the citations we already have from the main article over here where required, that should make a lot of those tags disappear.
I did make a change to the citation scheme, however. It's kind of a big task that will have to be reciprocated on the main article, but I digress... The main idea is to cite inline the page numbers/section locations within a single book. You might be able to decipher the new syntax, perhaps.
If you wouldn't mind, regarding that book you have access to, could you make a note here of the subsections and their page ranges, and their actual Japanese name? For example, like this:
Japanese Term
Book Term
Book Heading: Subheading
Book Subheading Page Range
e.g. Mizenkei
e.g. First Base
e.g. Verbs: First Base
e.g. 5-6
This way I could add the citations on the assumption that the information is validated by those sections. I don't actually have the book, so you could double-check that the presumed information matches the citation in your book.
Of course, you could do the citations so I wouldn't have to! But I don't mind either way; we're helping each other!
I was kind of hoping to finish the section today, on my day off 😛 — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 06:54, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Later that day: I didn't get around to it after all… I'll try to do it in the evenings after work this week, or on the weekend if it comes to it. Promise! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:45, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, of course I'll fill that table up! Hopefully this is what you wanted. The names in parentheses are the accompanying Japanese names and the arbitrary English translations mentioned in the book—a reminder that she offered the word 推量形 (suiryōkei) for the ishikei base, which I'm opposed to adopting for the article (besides, it's not one of the six traditional verb bases). She mainly refers to the verb bases by the ordinal numbered names, though.
Japanese Term
Book Term
Book Heading: Subheading
Book Subheading Page Range
Mizenkei
First Base (未然形/Negative Base)
Verbs: 1. First Base
5
Ren'yōkei
Second Base (連用形/Continuative Base)
Verbs: 2. Second Base
5-6
Shūshikei, Rentaikei
Third Base (a. 終止形/Conclusive Base; b. 連体形/Attributive Base)
Verbs: 3. Third Base
6
Kateikei
Fourth Base (仮定形/Conditional Base)
Verbs: 4. Fourth Base
6
Meireikei
Fifth Base (命令形/Imperative Base)
Verbs: 5. Fifth Base
6
Ishikei
Sixth Base (推量形/Tentative Base)
Verbs: 6. Sixth Base
6
Of course I'll be able to help verify if the citation is suitable with the respective information in the article, and make changes whenever necessary or I'll make a notice in the comments here if the book lacks material that verifies the cited information. I didn't know that it'll be a big work to transfer the citations to the main article. I really appreciate your efforts to make this possible! It's totally OK that the section hasn't been finished yet. The fact that it will soon be is still very exciting! Excusememoi (talk) 02:54, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
私たちは頑張りましたよね！
I finished researching the potential form and the evidence is conclusive: it's a sub-base of the mizenkei form (gee, that mizenkei base gets a lot of attention, doesn't it?). So I added another base to the table. The table might look a little scary at first glance, but it's comprehensive and likely to answer (rather than generate) questions for people researching the topic.
Moving on. The section is almost entirely cited. There are two claims in particular, though, that are based on trust in lieu of evidence: "…irrealis, originates from it’s archaic usage…" and "…ren'yōkei base sustained various euphonic changes…". The latter one might be easier to find a citation for; we just need to find 音便 and 連用形 in the same sentence in a book or journal. The first one might be a little harder.
It's kind of annoying because most of the Japanese language articles on Wikipedia seem almost entirely uncited. I don't suppose any of your books mention something to this affect?
Otherwise, so long as the citations (mainly for nomenclature) matches the information in your book, it seems like the article is ready for merging! What do you think? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:02, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
Ok, I was supposed to be making a reply after making my edits but I got caught up with so many things today, I apologise! I was really surprised to see that we now have one more verb in the article (and I'm now incredibly embarrased by my typo of the name of the new base but thank you for fixing that!) but I'm definitely in support of it. One thing I did—as you have noticed—, was to reanalyse できる not as a verb base because できる is technically the shūshikei/rentaikei form of, well, itself? (That, and the brief reasoning in the edit summary.) Hopefully that makes sense. I made some fixes to the McClain citations, namely about the conjugation chart. The pages I had described to you only provided a brief overview of each verb base. Thankfully some actual conjugation charts of these bases were described in the later pages, so I cited that part of the book.
I recently edited more of the McClain citations, and think I'm about done. However, I'm not very confident about the citation for the paragraph below the verb base table. There was nothing mentioning about what's considered fully conjugated forms in terms of the nine bases explicitly. However, the Hepburn romanisation of the example sentences in the book makes it clear that for example, the shūshikei/rentaikei base of a verb always remain in that form with no inflectional suffixes (e.g. "oyogu koto" instead of "oyogukoto"), and that the kateikei base is always suffixed with ば (e.g. "tabereba" instead of "tabere ba"). Nothing in that book mentions the onbinkei and kanōkei bases, to add to the matter. However, I don't find this paragraph to be challengeable claims. The information can be easily observed in the language. I would like to know if there's anyone who has found, say, an inflectional suffix that go after the meireikei form, for instance.
Unfortunately, I tried to find a citation of the second claim, but the best I could find was through the book that I have currently cited, which says "Consonant-stem verbs—This group of verbs went through various changes through the years." when talking about the perfective and te forms. I'm not sure if that'll suffice, or we can reword the claim so that it's not specific to "euphonic changes", despite the text linking to another Wikipedia article that described these euphonic changes in a table. For the other claim, that's going to be a difficult task to find a resource talking about the archaic usage of Japanese verbs, because it's within the realm of Classical Japanese. I'll likely have to look up something that talks about Classical Japanese typology, though I fear that it won't be as numerous as the number of resources talking about Modern Japanese typology, especially if we only consider English resources.
Are you planning on mentioning the kanōkei base in the subsection about derivative verb bases? I guess it hasn't been really described for the article how this verb base emerged from the mizenkei base. It's kinda strange how we're still settling on る as an inflectional suffix for the potential form of godan verbs despite changing the number of verb bases from 8 to 9, but considering it as such does make the verb formation simpler to conceptualise. The fact that the traditional 6-base system turned into a 9-base one really makes me think, 'what have we done with the once simpler-looking base system??' On one hand, the 9-base system makes Japanese verbs look incredibly difficult to learn at first sight. On the other, it does make Japanese conjugation more regular than what the 6-base system entails (volitional form using an offshoot of mizenkei? te form using ren'yōkei but not really? Etc). Nevertheless, thanks for your ongoing engagement with this section! I'm sure we can get it up on the main article real soon! Excusememoi (talk) 03:11, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for reanalysing できる！
…The information can be easily observed in the language. I would like to know if there's anyone who has found, say, an inflectional suffix that go after the meireikei form, for instance.…
I completely agree. Citation unecessary, because the statement is indirectly supported by the evidenced conjugations in the article too (those in turn are supported by evidence). I relocated the citation tag to the specific location we desire it.
Also, we don't need to fill every [citation needed] due to a kind of loophole. The information needing a citation was pre-existing in other Wikipedia articles, uncited themselves. Since the claims are likely to be true, not likely to be challenged, and were presumably added to the encyclopedia in good faith, we can crowdsource the citation using the "citation needed" tag. Hopefully somebody will come along and happen to have a citation for it. The other option is to remove or reword it, but I'm comfortable to leave it if you are.
As for the 音便形, I found a couple more Japanese research papers dedicated to the topic, so I'll add them real soon. Finally, people can do further research on the topic!
Oh whoops! You're totally right, I need to right a short mention of the kanōkei base in the "Derivative verb bases" subsection. I completely forgot, thanks.
As for the "official" and the "observable" systems of verb bases, I think it's best practice that Wikipedia explains the observable phenomena on any given article, rather than ignoring unofficial phenoma. In our case, there are plenty of academic articles, in Japanese, that have analysed the emerged patterns of the language. So I don't think it's controversial to include unofficial bases that have been rigourously documented by academic research, especially given that they're vital for usage in modern Japanese.
Once I add the information, and you proof read it, are you ready to merge this with the main page? — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 05:04, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Edit: I've finished editing the page now. I await your reply! JKVeganAbroad (talk) 16:33, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
These edits all look good! Thanks for the inclusion of the paragraph on the kanōkei base! And I'm totally ok with leaving the paragraph on the ren'yōkei euphonic changes as it is.
I found a PDF of the McClain book if you want to take a look at it. Additionally, I found some books on Classical Japanese, which may be of use for the remaining citation. One of them is by Shirane (pages 24-25 of the book). Another is by Wixted (pages 36-39 and 50-52 of the book). They both talk about the meaning of mizenkei and izenkei and how it relates with the grammar. Notably, English resources on Classical Japanese grammar—not just these two—love to translate mizenkei and izenkei as 'imperfective' and 'perfective'. I just hope they're good enough resources that'll support the claim on why the modern mizenkei base is called 未然形. I leave this judgement to you. 😁
Since there's nothing else besides that last citation, I believe we are ready to merge the section with the main page! Since I won't be able to handle transferring the citations, I would love it if you can initiate the merger. I'll then help out with revising the rest of the article and hopefully we can keep updated with replies here during the merger process. Does that sound good? Excusememoi (talk) 01:44, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Excellent resources! It's fantastic to have English citations available at our hands now.
I've updated the citation scheme on the main article to be in-line with Wikipedia's standards (the duplicate-citations per varying page number scheme that I was originally using has been deprecated by Wikipedia in favour of other schemes). This means the "Verb bases" section can be easily merged into the main article.
To do so, you need to merge the "Verb bases" section, and also the "Bibliography" section. I've made this easy for you by merging the Bibliography section here on this page (which means, you can completely replace the Bibliography section on the main article with the Bibliography section on this page). I suggest merging first, then revising the rest of the article afterwards.
I understand you asked me to initiate the merge, but I think it's most appropriate that you are credited with this contribution. Would you feel comfortable with that? You are the brainchild behind this project, after all! 😁 It's all ready for you to pull the switch, go for it, if you like! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 17:15, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
You say that the sections over here are made to be easily merged with the main article, but I know there would be at least something that has to be changed. For instance, all the wikilinks that direct to a section within the main article contain the string "#", which is no longer needed once it's merged over there. I reckon that there are more things that would have to be reformatted that I would not have caught, hence my hesitancy. Also, I don't really mind whether or not I get the credit; I'm just honoured that I got to help out with the article if anything!
But actually, I had just realised something just before the merger gets started, I'm sorry. It's about the terminology "verb base". If by any chance if the verb base system gets adopted in the article about i-adjectives and na-adjectives, it's no longer felicitous to refer the katsuyōkei as "verb bases". I don't know why I haven't come to that realisation sooner, as I have mentioned before that katsuyōkei isn't limited to verbs. Perhaps "stem bases" is the way to go, but I would like to know what you think. I think that'll be the last thing to make sure about before we get started with the merger. Excusememoi (talk) 23:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
It's true that some things may need to be corrected after the merge that we haven't noticed, such as the # tags you mentioned, but also the anchors in the article. It's okay to fix things after the merge, so I'm not too concerned about that. Also, I've changed those # tags now anyway. Regarding the terminology "verb base", I thought about that too for the specific case of the top-left cell of the table. I think on the adjective article we'll use the phrase "adjective base". I don't think this is a problem either, because if we assume each base to be a superset, then our article is only analysing the subset of that set relating to verbs. i.e. We're looking at the verb subset of the mizenkei base, and the verb subset of the ren'yōkei base, etc. But you're right that the introduction shouldn't refer to the katsuyōkei as "verb bases". I've changed this to "bases", since that paragraph continues to explain that adjectives use them too. Alright, it's ready to merge again, if you're willing to do it! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 01:48, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
Yep, I'm finally totally ready to do this, thanks for the input! I've just made the initial merger by tranferring the "Verb bases" and "Bibliography" sections to (what I hope is in) the appropriate locations in the main article. I'll be looking forward to revising the rest of the article in light of the added section. Thank you so much for your help in this undertaking! This would not be possible without your expertise! I wish I knew a proper way to publicly acknowledge your contribution to the new edit. Also, I hope that readers will find the information relatively easy enough to take in. Excusememoi (talk) 01:56, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
乾杯！🍻😆 And thank you so much for awarding me with the Teamwork Barnstar! Also, don't forget about completing the description of the ず form. I see it hidden in the main article. 😉 Excusememoi (talk) 03:16, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
No worries! I fulfilled my end of the bargain and completed the information on 〜ず and the te form vs the conjunctive form. I'll unwatch this page now, since our project is completed, but feel free to start up new discussions on the JVC Talk page or my talk page if you have more ideas! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 11:34, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
