b) Motte without wo generally signifies "and thereby," "and

thus."

c) But both wo motte and motte may often be neglected in translating, though some trace of their proper meaning generally lingers in the original Japanese; thus: Guntai wo moke motte kokka wo hogo su, "We raise troops to (and thereby) protect our native land." Hanahada motte, "very"; Ima motte, "now," "down to the present."

d) Wo motte suru properly means "to use," but it can often be dropped in translation: Waga hai no miru tokoro wo motte suru ni, "looking at it from our point of view" (lit., "using the seeing place of our company").

e) Wo motte nari means "it is because of."

f) Kore wo motte, "on this account," "for this reason," "therefore."

g) Omomuki wo motte, "with regard to," "in respect to."

91. Wo shite. (a) With a causative verb serves to denote the person who is caused to perform the action (§ 206). Thus Dai shichi shidan wo shite kõgeki seshimeki, "He caused the seventh division to attack."

b) Occasionally the noun corresponding to the English nominative is marked by the addition of wo shite, as: Moshi Kairiku un-yu no jotai wo shite, kaku no gotoku fukanzen naru koto nakarashimeba, "if the state of communications by sea and land were not so imperfect as they are."

92. Ya mo, "whether

may (might) not," .... ni itaru ya mo shiru bekarazu, "We cannot tell whether it may not result in.....”

93. Ya wo: in this combination ya has its original interrogative sense, and wo serves to show that the whole clause preceding it is the object of the following verb: Nani ga yue ni furuwazarishi ya wo tankyu suru ni, lit., "on investigating (this thing) because of what did it not exercise influence?" i.e., "on inquiring into the reasons for its lack of success."

94. The general rule, according to which particles and postpositions must be preceded by the attributive form of the verb or adjective, admits of a few exceptions in special locutions, besides those noted before under ka, ni, to, etc.; thus: ari no mama (for aru mama), "just as it is," nashi ni (for naki ni), "without"; and such idioms as furi mo sede or furi wa sede, "not raining"; Kuwashiku wa zonzezu, "(I) know not exactly," where the indefinite form precedes mo and wa.

CHAPTER VII

THE ADJECTIVE

PRIMARY ADJECTIVE FORMS

95. The inflections of Japanese adjectives do not, like the inflections of English adjectives, serve to distinguish the degree of comparison. Neither do they, as in French, indicate number or gender. Number and gender are considerations to which the Japanese grammatical system pays little or no heed. The object of the inflections of Japanese adjectives (and verbs) is primarily to show whether the force of the adjective (or verb) is attributive or predicative, indefinite or conclusive; and secondly, to mark distinctions of tense and mood. All adjectives contain the verb "to be" implicitly. Thus: Umi fukashi, "The sea (is) deep."

In its simple state, a Japanese adjective has four forms, viz.: 96. The stem which is used only in compounds as hosonagaki, "narrow-long," i.e., "slender"; yo-suguru, "to be too good."

97. The indefinite or adverbial form, which is obtained by adding ku to the stem. It is used in two distinct manners, viz.:

a) To qualify a verb as: Hayaku kuru, "to come quickly." In this case it corresponds to the English adverb in ly. But the Japanese use this form even before such verbs as "to be" and "to become," where English idiom requires the corresponding adjective. Thus: Utuskushiku naru beshi, "It will become beautiful."

b) As itself a predicative verb in every clause of a sentence except the last. Thus: Yama takaku, kikō samuku, jinka sukunashi, "The mountains (of a certain country) are high, its climate is cold, and human dwellings few." In such cases each Japanese adjective in ku must be rendered by the corresponding English adjective preceded by some tense of the verb "to be." The essential characteristic of the indefinite form is that it has no tense or mood. In order to know by what tense or mood to translate it into English, it is necessary to ascertain the tense or mood of the adjective or verb nearest after it which is not also in the same indefinite form. Sometimes this will be the last adjective or verb of the whole sentence, sometimes only the adjective or verb of the last of a set of similar clauses. Thus in the foregoing example takaku and samuku must be translated by the English present indicative, because of the final adjective sukunashi makes a general assertion, and may therefore be considered to be in the present tense. Again, take the example: Toshi wakaku, karada mo tsuyokereba, gunjin ni teki su-beshi, "Being young and strong, he will be suitable for a soldier." Here the intervention of the adjective tsuyokereba in the conditional mood at the end of the succeeding clause shows that wakaku also must be construed as a conditional (wakakereba). The construction is often a little more complicated. Thus: Fune aredomo hito naku: hito aru mo kikai nakariki, "We had ships, but no men; and even if we had had the men, we had no machinery." Here the rhythm of the sentence shows that we must go to the end of the clause hito aru mo, kikai nakariki to find the adjective (verb) corresponding to naku. The aru of the second clause has to be passed over.

98. The conclusive form, which is obtained by adding shi to the stem. It is used only as a predicative, as in the case of sukunashi in the first example given in the preceding paragraph. Those adjectives whose stem ends in shi or ji do not add another shi to form the conclusive, the one shi being held to suffice. Thus: mezurashiku, conclusive mezurashi, "strange"; arumajiku, conclusive aru-maji, "should not be." This exception is sometimes disregarded by ignorant writers; and such ungrammatical forms as ashishi (for ashi), "bad," are therefore occasionally met with.

99. The attributive form, which is obtained by adding ki to the stem. It is used in three distinct manners:

a) To qualify a noun, as yoroshiki hōhō, "a good method"; aru-majiki koto, "a thing that ought not to be" (lit., "an oughtnot-to-be thing").

b) When the adjective is followed by a postposition, thus: hōhō no yoroshiki yori (colloq., shikata ga yoroshii kara), "owing to the excellence of the method"; Mijikaki mo yoshi, "Though (it is) short, it is good." Yoshi is the conclusive form of the adjective yoki. It will be noticed that the attributive form of the adjective, when thus used, ceases to be an adjective according to European ideas, and corresponds rather to an English abstract substantive, or to an adjective preceded by the verb "to be." The abstract substantive in sa, so common in the colloquial, is almost always replaced in the written language by the attributive form, as samuki for samusa, "the cold."

c) At the end of a clause or sentence, when one of the preceding words of the clause or sentence is an interrogative. Thus: Susumu to shirizoku to izure ka yoki? "To advance or to retreat, which is better?"

2

100. The paradigm of the primary forms of adjectives is as follows:

101. Being of the nature of a verb, the Japanese adjective is inflected to indicate tense and mood. The conclusive and