Adjectival Noun (Japanese) - Terminology

Terminology

The terminology used to refer to these words is quite inconsistent. The Japanese term is 形容動詞, keiyō-dōshi, which literally means "adjectival verb", and gives a direct translation. However, this term is at odds with how these words are generally analyzed, leading to different choices of terminology.

Grammatically these words are nouns, or more technically nominals, which function attributively (like adjectives) – the main differences being that nouns take a 〜の -no suffix when acting attributively while these words take a 〜な -na suffix when acting attributively, and that most of these words cannot be used as the agent or patient (i.e. subject) of a sentence, but otherwise behaving essentially identically grammatically. Thus, they are various referred to as or "adjectival verbs" (literal translation), "adjectival nouns" (nouns that function adjectivally), na-adjectives (function as adjectives, take na), and na-nominals (nominals that take na). For example, Eleanor Harz Jorden refers to them as na-nominals in her textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language.

In fact, by some analyses, nouns and na-nominals are fundamentally grammatically the same, where 〜の vs. 〜な when used attributively is simply a conventional stylistic complementary distribution, with 〜の／〜な being allomorphs. This view is reinforced by the fact that some words, such as 特別 tokubetsu "special" can take either a 〜の or a 〜な, depending on the phrase. Ultimately, 〜な is an abbreviation of 〜にある, used to use a noun attributively (compare modern 〜である, which is a more recent form), while 〜の is the genitive case; see etymology, below.