{"id":232,"date":"2008-10-28T13:41:10","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T20:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/?p=342"},"modified":"2009-05-19T13:05:20","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T18:05:20","slug":"peculiar-properties-of-%e3%80%8c%e5%a4%9a%e3%81%84%e3%80%8d-and-%e3%80%8c%e5%b0%91%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%80%8d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/28\/peculiar-properties-of-%e3%80%8c%e5%a4%9a%e3%81%84%e3%80%8d-and-%e3%80%8c%e5%b0%91%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%80%8d\/","title":{"rendered":"Peculiar properties of \u300c\u591a\u3044\u300d and \u300c\u5c11\u306a\u3044\u300d"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting post I read recently about \u300c\u591a\u3044\u300d and \u300c\u5c11\u306a\u3044\u300d<\/a> got me thinking (probably a bit too much). The post is also all in Japanese, so it’s good reading practice as well.<\/p>\n

As Minako Okamoto points out, you can’t directly modify a noun with \u300c\u591a\u3044\u300d and \u300c\u5c11\u306a\u3044\u300d in the manner below.<\/p>\n

\u6771\u4eac\u306b\u591a\u3044\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3<\/strike>\u304c\u3042\u308b<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I believe this is due to the idiosyncrasy of having adjectives that indicate multiple objects in a language that has no singular\/plural distinction. (I have another post that explores this theme in depth that has been in my draft folder forever.) In addition, other words that indicates multiple objects such as \u300c\u5c11\u6570\u300d and \u300c\u591a\u6570\u300d are almost always used as nouns despite the fact that they are descriptive and would normally be thought of as adjectives. (I have no idea whether they are officially classified as just nouns or as both nouns and na-adjectives.)<\/p>\n

The easy way<\/h3>\n

There are many ways to get around this problem of not being able to directly modify the noun with adjectives indicating amounts. For instance, you can make the adjective a predicate or use adverbs such as \u300c\u305f\u304f\u3055\u3093\u300d and \u300c\u5c11\u3057\u300d instead as Minako demonstrates.<\/p>\n

\u6771\u4eac\u306b\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3\u304c\u591a\u3044<\/u>\u3002
\n\u6771\u4eac\u306b\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3\u304c\u305f\u304f\u3055\u3093<\/u>\u3042\u308b\u3002<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The not-as-easy way<\/h3>\n

While this works fine for elementary Japanese, more complicated sentences might call for a direct noun modification. This is especially the case when the main focus of the sentence is something else and the fact that it’s numerous or few in number is extraneous information. In order to do this, all you have to do is modify as a noun using \u300c\u306e\u300d instead of the traditional adjective-noun modification. For i-adjectives, you have to convert it to an adverb first by replacing \u300c\u3044\u300d with \u300c\u304f\u300d.<\/p>\n

\u6771\u4eac\u3067\u306f\u3001\u591a\u304f\u306e<\/u>\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3\u304c\u5b8c\u5168\u7981\u7159\u306e\u5236\u5ea6\u3092\u5b9f\u65bd\u3057\u59cb\u3081\u3066\u3044\u308b\u3002
\n(I completely made this example up so I have no idea if this is true and I would guess probably not.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oddly enough, I have never seen the opposite \u300c\u5c11\u306a\u304f\u306e\u300d. I guess every language has its quirks. You can however, use \u300c\u5c11\u6570\u306e\u300d instead.<\/p>\n

80\u5bfe20\u306e\u6cd5\u5247\u306b\u3088\u308b\u3068\u3001\u5c11\u6570\u306e\u30d0\u30b0<\/u>\u304c\u5927\u591a\u6570\u306e\u554f\u984c<\/u>\u306e\u539f\u56e0\u3068\u306a\u308b\u3002<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!)<\/h3>\n

Some people might look down on what I called “elementary” earlier but in languages, simpler is always better. So in most cases and especially in conversational Japanese, you should just stick to the simpler method of using words like \u300c\u305f\u304f\u3055\u3093\u300d and \u300c\u5c11\u3057\u300d without mucking around with what is more of a formal written style using \u300c\u591a\u304f\u306e\u300d, etc.<\/p>\n

I should also note that there is a big difference between a direct noun modification and a subordinate clause modification as the two examples below show.<\/p>\n

\uff11\uff09\u3000\u6771\u4eac\u306b\u591a\u3044\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3<\/strike>\u304c\u3042\u308b\u3002
\n\uff12\uff09\u3000\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3\u304c\u591a\u3044<\/u>\u6771\u4eac\u304c\u597d\u304d\u3060\u3002<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unlike the first sentence where \u300c\u591a\u3044\u300d is directly modifying \u300c\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3\u300d, the second sentence is perfectly fine because \u300c\u591a\u3044\u300d is the predicate in the clause \u300c\u30ec\u30b9\u30c8\u30e9\u30f3\u304c\u591a\u3044\u300d and is not<\/b> directly modifying the noun \u300c\u6771\u4eac\u300d by itself.<\/p>\n

So in most cases, if you stick to the basics, there should be no problem at all. In fact, I have personally never noticed this peculiar problem until I consciously thought about it. In conclusion, remember that “brevity is the soul of wit”!<\/p>\n

Can anybody think of any other adjectives that have similar issues?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting post I read recently about \u300c\u591a\u3044\u300d and \u300c\u5c11\u306a\u3044\u300d got me thinking (probably a bit too much). The post is also all in Japanese, so it’s good reading practice as well. As Minako Okamoto points out, you can’t directly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","category-intermediate","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}