Japanese Equivalents of Adjectives - Types of Adjective

Types of Adjective

In Japanese, nouns and verbs can modify nouns, with nouns taking the 〜の particles when functioning attributively (in the genitive case), and verbs in the attributive form (連体形 rentaikei). These are considered separate classes of words, however.

Most of words that can be considered to be adjectives in Japanese fall into two categories– variants of verbs, and nouns:

• adjective (Japanese: 形容詞, keiyōshi, literally "adjective"), or i-adjectives

These can be considered specialized verbs, and have a conjugating ending -i which can become, for example, past or negative. For example, atsui (暑い) "hot":

暑い日 (Atsui hi) ("a hot day")

今日は暑い。(Kyō wa atsui.) ("Today is hot.")

• adjectival noun (形容動詞, keiyō-dōshi, literally "adjective verb"), or na-adjectives

These can be considered a form of noun; these attach to a form of the copula, which then inflects, but use 〜な -na (rather than the genitive 〜の) when modifying a noun. For example, hen (変) "strange":

変な人 (Hen-na hito) ("a strange person")

彼は変だ。(Kare wa hen da.) ("he is strange.")

Both the predicative forms (終止形 shūshikei "terminal form") and attributive forms (連体形 rentaikei) of adjectival verbs and adjectival nouns can be analyzed as verb phrases, making the attributive forms of adjectival verbs and adjectival nouns relative clauses, rather than adjectives. According to this analysis, Japanese has no syntactic adjectives.

Japanese adjectives that do not fall into either of these categories are usually grouped into a grab bag category:

• attributives (連体詞, rentaishi, literally "attributive")

These may only occur before nouns, not in a predicative position. They are various in derivation and word class, and are generally analyzed as variants of more basic classes, where this specific form (possibly a fossil) can only be used in restricted settings. For example, ōkina (大きな) "big" (variant of 大きい):

大きな事(Ōkina koto) ("a big thing")

A couple of small sub-categories can be distinguished in these categories, reflecting former grammatical distinctions or constructions which no longer exist:

• -shii adjectives (form of -i adjectives, see below)
• -yaka na adjectives (see below)
• -raka na adjectives (see below)
• taru adjectives (ト・タル形容動詞, to,taru keiyōdōshi, literally "to, taru adjectival noun")

These are a variant of the common na-nominals (adjectival noun; see article for naming) that developed in Late Old Japanese and have mostly died out, surviving in a few cases as fossils; they are usually classed as a form of 形容動詞 (adjectival noun), as the Japanese name indicates.

• naru adjectives

These are words that were traditionally earlier forms of na-nominals, but that followed a path similar to taru adjectives, surviving in a few cases as fossils. These are generally classed as rentaishi.