[aDoBJG] Grammatical Terms 💮 A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

Grammatical Terms


A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar :white_flower: Home Thread

Next Part: Characteristics of Japanese Grammar - Part 1

Reading

Week
Start Date
Reading Page Numbers Page Count
#1 Mar 25th Grammatical Terms 1 - 15 15
All the terms covered, thanks to @polv
  1. Active Sentence
  2. Agent
  3. Appositive Clause (Construction)
  4. Auxiliary Adjective
  5. Auxiliary Verb
  6. Compound Particle
  7. Compound Sentence
  8. Contrastive Marker
  9. Coordinate Conjunction
  10. Direct Object
  11. Double Particle
  12. Embedded Sentence
  13. Hearer
  14. Imperative Form
  15. Indefinite Pronoun
  16. Intransitive Verb
  17. I-type Adjective
  18. Na-type Adjective
  19. Nominalizer
  20. Passive Sentence
  21. Potential Form
  22. Predicate
  23. Prenominal Form
  24. Punctual Verb
  25. Stative Verb
  26. Subject
  27. Subordinate Clause
  28. Transitive Verb
  29. Volitional Sentence
  30. WH-question
  31. WH-word
  32. Yes-No Question

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21 Likes

Auxiliary verb: I just had to comment on this sentence: 僕は宿題をしてしまった。Because all I could think was “what’s so bad about that?” and then I read the translation and was reminded of the basic meaning. xD

Also, if anyone is wondering, I’m not sure what “Cp.” stands for but it points to other (related) grammar terms that will be (/has been) explained.

9 Likes

I’m guessing it means “compare”?

6 Likes

Could it mean “compare”?


(from dictionary.com)

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The OED thinks it stands for the latin ‘compara’, making it one of a handful of abbreviated Latin markers you might run into, others including cf. (confer), id. (idem), ib. (ibidem), et seqq. (et sequentia), i.e. (id est), e.g. (exempli gratia). This one’s a bit on the rare side, and it’s unfortunate the dictionary didn’t put it in the abbreviations list.

9 Likes

Thanks all! My brain assumed “contrast point” and I just knew that wasn’t exactly it, even though I didn’t think I was that far off on meaning. :joy:

I did immediately look there and was surprised it wasn’t there. Maybe it only comes up in the grammar terms pages, so it was forgotten/not considered important enough.

6 Likes

Auxiliary Adjective: I was a bit surprised that ようだ got listed here, especially with the だ included in the bold part.

5 Likes

Damn, we’re starting, I didn’t realize we were already at the end of march

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True! (Same holds for そうだ, I guess?) I double-checked Bunpro and it calls ようだ an auxiliary verb which sounds more fitting :thinking:


TIL that としては is a compound particle! (I would have called it an expression at best, hehe)


Also, each time I read something like “the particle wa” I am very confused for a split second, and then I realize it’s talking about は :woman_facepalming:

8 Likes


thirding or fourthing the ‘cp.’ meaning: from this context, it definitely means compare, yeah (“compare active sentence to passive sentence”)

Also same, snuck up on me :sweat_smile:

I hadn’t seen a good example of the difference between using の and こと as nominalizers before, but now that I see it written out this makes a lot of sense to me in the places i’ve seen them

5 Likes

DoBJG seems to group these differently from other sources I’ve used. Namely 助動詞 - 国語の文法(口語文法) and cross-referencing Goo.

For one, I don’t think there’s normally considered to be a difference between auxiliary adjectives and auxiliary verbs. They are both just 助動詞. For example, らしい (treated as a 形容詞) and られる (treated as a 動詞) are both 助動詞. On the other hand (and I just learned this!), things like the いる in ている are actually 補助動詞, which are basically just verbs that have taken on a grammatical usage separate from their original meaning.

Second, ほしい is just considered a normal 形容詞 according to Goo. Same with やすい. So I’m slightly doubting these examples…


Side comment: I forgot how awful romaji is. What a terrible decision to not just use furigana or hiragana copies of the sentences.

14 Likes

Was this dictionary even edited? How did they manage to write out all intransitive verb examples in the Transitive Verb section?

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Holy crap you’re right, i totally skipped over that; hoping most of the focus was on the entries :sweat_smile:

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I think this is a good way to look at it. I wasn’t sure about ようだ being considered an aux adjective or aux verb because よう is a noun after all, but “bound auxiliary” (definition for 助動詞 given in Jisho) is a good way to put it.

ugh I know right? And it’s the type of romaji that uses ō instead of ou… At least is does show long vowels in some way though?

With the lack of examples in the intransitive verb section (only one) I’m hoping that this really was an editing mistake and not that they really think those sentences are transitive…


I’m done with this week’s reading, now trying to decide if I should track my progress with this one in Natively even though I usually don’t use that for textbooks…

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In defense of this, ō is better, because it draws a distinction between an う sound elongating an お sound and an お and う that happened to fall next to each other, but are otherwise pronounced separately (a distinction, that doesn’t exist in kana, but I digress). As far as I know, besides IME romaji, really no other romaji systems uses ou as a substitute. I, for one, am glad, that this isn’t the kind of romaji, that writes せんせい as sensee

14 Likes

I guess I mostly like my romaji to match the kana as much as possible (to distinguish おう from おお), but it doesn’t really matter, either way I can’t stand romaji lol. But I can see your point of view, and I’d rather it’s ō than oo or just o.

True. (this makes me wonder if せんせい’s ever been romanized as sense…)

Off topic, but about romaji

Speaking of romaji, this is a bit off topic, but in something I had to read for class last semester, a word was written as zibunzisin and it took me so long to figure out what the heck that meant :joy: It was a linguistics class not a Japanese class so in that case it makes sense that romaji was used, but I was so confused. Turns out it was 自分自身, I completely forgot that じ can be romanized as zi.

I’m glad this book uses ji instead of zi

7 Likes

Finished reading this week’s part. What an exciting story. When it said:

Kaori deceived Ichiro.
Ichiro gave a scarf to Midori.

I knew exactly what kind of story we’re getting into. Full of betrayal, yet still finding joy in the small things in life, like a cute girl in a scarf. I’m looking forward to what the main chapters have to offer.

26 Likes

花子は一郎の大学入学を喜んだ。 Hanako was glad that Ichiro entered college
花子は淋しいようだ。 Hanako looks lonely.

The plot thickens. So Hanako says she’s glad that Ichiro’s in college, but is she really?

20 Likes

Terms are the following. Try to recall what it refers to, subclassification, and comparisons. The first two may be easier to understand on first go-through.

  1. Active Sentence
  2. Agent
  3. Appositive Clause (Construction)
  4. Auxiliary Adjective
  5. Auxiliary Verb
  6. Compound Particle
  7. Compound Sentence
  8. Contrastive Marker
  9. Coordinate Conjunction
  10. Direct Object
  11. Double Particle
  12. Embedded Sentence
  13. Hearer
  14. Imperative Form
  15. Indefinite Pronoun
  16. Intransitive Verb
  17. I-type Adjective
  18. Na-type Adjective
  19. Nominalizer
  20. Passive Sentence
  21. Potential Form
  22. Predicate
  23. Prenominal Form
  24. Punctual Verb
  25. Stative Verb
  26. Subject
  27. Subordinate Clause
  28. Transitive Verb
  29. Volitional Sentence
  30. WH-question
  31. WH-word
  32. Yes-No Question

So there are 32 keywords. Having 7 days, going through by 5 each day seems reasonable.

A little personal rant

I shouldn’t really bought a localized version (Thai). The keywords are still in English anyway. Not everything is originally in Japanese or one language, to begin with.

Luckily, I have PDF from some time ago.

8 Likes

So far, Bill has physically assaulted two characters, Martha and the narrator. I strongly suspect that this chapter is trying to foreshadow Bill as a future antagonist.

Additionally, Bill didn’t show up at an unspecified location when he was expected to. He seems to be quite the unreliable character. Personally, I don’t trust him, and I think he’s someone we should keep an eye out for as the story continues.

23 Likes