Peer review discussion

The following is cut-and-pasted from the peer-review page because it is likely to be deleted there. I'll try to implement some of these suggestions. — Kaustuv 23:31, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Needs an introduction. The first sentence jumps directly into verb morphology, a narrow subtopic that belongs in the Verbs section. Likewise, each major heading needs an introduction. If a reader sees the table of contents and clicks on "Verbs", the first sentence he or she sees is "Verbs in Japanese are rigidly constrained to the ends of clauses in what is known as the predicate position." This is valid information for the article, but it doesn't lead the reader into the topic.

Needs more, and more accessible, information for non-specialist in grammar as well. If you read each topic, and ask the question, "Where will the non-specialist give up in despair?" you'll see what I mean. If you provide the information the non-specialist needs first, and then delve into detail for the interested few, you'll better serve the readership.

Does not consistently follow Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles in matters such as romanization. Even single expressions mix romanization styles, for example, "SA-gyou henkaku katsuyō". Other oddities include macrons over e and i (へー, いいえ), romanizing katakana words in full caps and dashes for some double vowels as in Meri-.

Uses abbreviations such as aka.

Needs attention to words like pikuniku --> pikunikku, bagu --> baggu.

Assumes the reader knows Japanese. Only readers who already know Japanese will understand the significance of underlining "o yoso ni" in this example:

兄は両親の心配をよそに、大学をやめてしまった。

ani wa ryōshin no shinpai o yoso ni, daigaku wo yamete shimatta

Ignoring my parents' worries, my brother dropped out of college.

Fg2 06:43, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Katakanization of Mary

I think マリー or メリー is the accepted katakanization of "Mary", "Marie", etc. Why was it changed to メーリ? Can you document this spelling in the wild? — Kaustuv 07:08, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

... um, no. I didn't think about possible pre-existing conventions when I did that. "Marie" and "Mary" are pronounced differently (at least in my dialect); the closest approximation to "Marie" would be マリー, and to "Mary", メーリ. Since convention dictates otherwise, may I suggest that we just use マリー (which, quoth Google, is of slightly-wider circulation -- though it may change its mind tomorrow), and "translate" it as "Marie" in the English sentences, instead of "Mary"? --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 18:42, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

The pronunciation of "Mary" is pretty inconsistent among English speakers [1], and in any event I doubt the katakana form of that name comes from English. Incidentally, メアリー or マリア are also possible (eg. Mary Magdalene = マグダラのマリア). Kaustuv 21:33, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

No, never mind. There exists also the convention of "John" and "Mary" as pseudocharacters in example sentences, doesn't there. Reverting. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 18:56, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

Major rewrite

Inspired by the comments on the FA submission, I decided to give the page a sound kick in the nads. While working on it, I was either unable or unwilling to keep a lot of the material. I pray the authors of the pieces I nixed will be kinder to me than I've been to them.

A major complaint was that the page didn't conform to the various manuals of style. I've tried to remedy that as much as possible. Unfortunately, the MoS for Japanese pages is incomplete (doesn't say anything about long ii or ei), inconsistent (treats ou and oo in the same way), and unfollowable in every detail for a page on Japanese (in particular, the bracketing routine is not followable if one wants to talk about the Japanese word).

I believe that in both standard and revised Hepburn, ē is only used for 「エー」. Collapsing both oo and ou to ō is unfortunate (I don't like it either) but not an inconsistency, and best for the casual reader, which (alas) is probably most people. On the other hand, breaking the "bracketing routine" is perfectly acceptable here. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 16:51, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

Is ē used for ええ ("yes") or へ〜 ("wow!") in Hepburn-shiki? Kaustuv 17:51, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

... for ええ, I think so. (Let's face it: neither ē nor ee is going to help the uninformed Anglophone reader there.) As far as fun little things like へぇ～ are concerned -- honestly I don't think there's a preferable answer to that one. Or even a satisfactory answer, come to that. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 03:47, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)

A second major complaint was that there were incomplete sections. There are still incomplete bits, but they are harder to find.
A third major complaint was that the TOC was unwieldy. I've tried to make the sections sufficiently shallow.
My major complaint with the earlier version was that it wasn't coherent at high and low levels of focus. I've tried to remedy both.
The article is still c. 70KB long. Someone with good editorial skills should chop it up. I've already decided to move the section on politeness to a separate article. Perhaps the details on the following sections also deserve their own articles: particles, auxiliary verbs.

I think this article can become FA worthy with some work. It's about 50% there. What's sorely missing is commentary by actual Japanese scholars and native speakers. Still, we have a better Japanese grammar page than the Japanese Wikipedia, IMHO :-) Kaustuv 08:06, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

Have you finished your changes? I don't want to spend too much time reviewing the article if there are more changes on the way. Also, please could you point me towards the featured article comments? I can't seem to find them. Thanks. --Auximines 09:47, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What remains of my edits: an unfinished table of compound particles, an unwritten bibliography, and minor corrections here and there. I think you should be able to review the article as it stands now. link to FAC nomination comments Kaustuv 12:31, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

I'll try not to get too offended that my section on -tara/-eba conditionals got struck out, but (unless I'm missing something) you omit entirely the -tara conjugation (not to mention any treatment of the various forms of conditionals -- to/-te/-tara/-eba). Also, the table on historical kana usage might be better relocated to that article (assuming it doesn't get merged into the kana article. Your rewrite seems to be pretty well organized and clear, although technical: it could be pretty intimidating for someone who isn't either a grammarian or already pretty well acquainted with Japanese. Who were you writing this for? adamrice 15:41, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah, you are right. The bits about -tara need to be back, and a discussion about the various subjunctive/hypothetical moods would be a worthy add. About target audience: there are a thousand and one introductions to Japanese on the web, but nothing that really gets into the details. (In English, at least.) There is a companion WikiBook that would be seem to be a better place for an introduction to Japanese for learners. (I can't seem to find it right now, strangely.) I agree about moving the kana history to that article. Perhaps the entire onbin section should move house. Kaustuv 20:38, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

I think long ii should be spelled ii -- because that's roughly how it's pronounced anyway, and ī looks almost indistinguishable from i. ei isn't really long e. ou is long o, however, whereas oo possibly evolved from oho (via owo), in fact, one of my books says that oo exclusively evolved from oho, and isn't really common anyway. Including the kana/kanji along side will disambiguate any romanisation ambiguities.

ou isn't always long o, though-- for example in omou.

Onomatopoeia vs. sound symbolism

Aargh! Only giseigo is onomatopoeia. Gitaigo and giongo are correctly known as phenomimes and psychomimes. Please do not make changes that you don't fully understand!! Kaustuv 03:20, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)

Ah. In that case. (Use Japanese terminology alongside English terminology to disambiguate.) - 刘 (劉) 振霖 16:23, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

Obsolete comments below

Gah, forgot to log in before I started editing -- Dysfunktion

Regarding Japanese grammar, what did you mean by Honorifics are not used exclusively with the adressee or those outside one's group, either? The rest of the paragraph talks about making nouns honorific and doesn't seem to have anything to do with this sentence. Mdchachi 20:27, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I didn't write anything in the Politeness section; I took it from Japanese language and organized it a bit. Please edit it so that it is correct and makes sense. Gdr 08:36, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

Revth wrote this:

Personal pronouns may be spelled in any of kanji, hiragana, or katakana and this let writers imply more informations. boku spelled with hiragana usually indicate that he or she is a young person in a elementary school as kanji for this word is taught later.

and I removed it because it isn't to do with Japanese grammar, but rather with the writing system and the conventions for its use. It's related to the material in the Modern Japanese writing system section of the Japanese language article so may belong there. Gdr 09:09, 2004 Apr 15 (UTC)

Why use "gerund" when just "~te form" is both better and more accurate? (cf. usage in Makino&Tsutsui Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series, or Shibatani The Languages of Japan). Incidentally, it might be good to add some standard kokugo grammar, because the treatment is JSL biased, IMO. (I mean things like bunsetsu, the traditional stem forms (~kei) and their historical context eg. izenkei → kateikei, the various onbin, etc.) --Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:43, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The changes you propose sound good. Please make them (see Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages). I still think it would be useful for English-speaking readers to relate the Japanese grammatical concepts to European grammatical concepts like the gerund, even if "~te form" is preferred. Gdr 12:02, 2004 Jun 2 (UTC)

OK. I am constrained more by time than timidity, but I will make some changes. To start with, I re-drafted the intro, because the text already there was not believable. Here, for posterity, is what I replaced:

The study of Japanese grammar began only in the Meiji era as a part of the ";Europeanization"; process. Japanese has most likely been the same as long as it has existed; the oldest literary works have the same basic grammar.

Kaustuv Chaudhuri 16:05, 2004 Jun 2 (UTC)

Your introduction is much better than the text it replaced. Thank you. (It's now too technical for a general audience. But that can be fixed.) Gdr 16:39, 2004 Jun 2 (UTC)

Made some more changes. A few points—

I have in my notes the classification 連成名詞 for nouns formed out of verbs (eg. 決まり) and adjectives (楽しさ), but I couldn't find an mention of it in 広辞苑.
The text seems to confuse polite, formal and honorific. It would be better to pick consistent glosses. The section on politeness needs work.
Some of the examples sound absurd to me, particularly the second example given for "flexible word order".

Also, I would greatly appreciate if a native speaker would correct mistakes. Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:23, 2004 Jun 3 (UTC)

Started editing the formality section. There is some material there that I haven't worked in yet. Also removed the following text (section "word order") because it is either misleading or redundant.

Japanese is a SOV (Subject Object Verb) language. For example,

猫は魚を食べる

neko wa sakana o taberu

Cat (topic) fish (object) eat

= The cat eats the fish (or Cats eat fish)

Word order is flexible for emphasis or in poetry, so these word orders are possible:

魚を猫は食べる

sakana o neko wa taberu

猫は魚を食べる

taberu neko wa sakana o

When it is clear from the context, the subject is often omitted:

魚を食べる

sakana o taberu

(It/They) eats fish.

Comments welcomed (encouraged!) as usual. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 02:38, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

Sections 2 (historical remarks) and 4 (politeness and honorifics) should really move later in the article. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 12:45, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

adjective nouns v. na-ajectives.

The page was recently edited to change "na-adjectives" to "adjectival nouns". I prefer the first term, as there are plenty of words that can form modifiers with na, but which cannot be used as nouns, or at least are not normally used as nouns (kirei, shizuka). conversely there are nouns that can form adjectives with the -i (aka). But before I edit, I'd like to prompt some discussion. Which term is most generally used. Which is most accurate. which is best Zeimusu 13:40, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Though I didn't make that change, adjectival noun is closer to the traditional term for it (viz. keiyoudoushi) than na-adjective, don't you think? Yet, I do agree that the latter is more perspicuous. I just did a brief survey of all the English-language books and papers I have on Japanese linguistics, and the usage of "na-(type) adjective" and "adjectival noun" breaks up evenly, even for the same author! The only consistent use of "adjectival noun" is in Shibatani's The Languages of Japan, Cambridge 1990. Japanese language books (eg. Mikami, Nihongo no koubun, Kuroshio-Shuppan 1963) use keiyoudoushi, of course. Kaustuv Chaudhuri 18:12, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

(Incidentally, I have always been perplexed by why it is keiyoudoushi, or dually, why it's not translated as adjectival verb. Kaustuv Chaudhuri)

aka, and akai, technically, are just words that happen to start with the same kanji and pronounciation and have the same meaning... Well, they have the same roots, but I don't think many would agree that it is at all regular, the formation of nouns, verbs and adjectives like that. Just like we have nareta and nareru -- they both mean the same thing; hajime and hajimeru for another. Perhaps it is a leftover from an older conjugation & declension system. There are a number of adjectives and adjectivial nouns with the same meaning, for instance, chiisai and chiisa, as you point out. Anyway. The noun category is quite open and liberal in Japanese. Verbal nouns (-suru verbs), adverbal nouns (-ni adverb), adjectivial nouns (-na adjective), etc. - 刘 (劉) 振霖 12:28, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

I love your table, but I think there is a mistake. Keiyoudoushi not rentaishi is what is usually glossed as "adjectival noun" or "na-adjective". Rentaishi is used for things like iwayuru, saru (eg. saru tooka no asa), aru (eg. mukashi, aru tokoro ni ojiisan to obaasan ga imashita), etc. Hmm, I seem to be commenting a lot. Kaustuv 21:12, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

Sorry. Reversed the footnotes.

Jim Breen (edict) has a strong preference for "na-adjective" arguing that it is incorrect to call a word like "shizuka" a noun. (The nominal form is shizukesa, I think.) "na-adjective" seems to be in use in recent textbooks, whereas adjectival noun in older texts and grammars. Japanese authors seem to prefer "adjectival noun".

As much respect as I have for Prof. Breen, I think there is some disagreement about what sort of word shizuka is. I quote from 広辞苑 here (I have excised the mostly literary citations):

しずか【静か・閑か】シヅカ 1. 動かないさま。2. おちついているさま。あわてないさま。3. さわがしくないさま。うるさい音のないさま。

Although 広辞苑 (wisely) refrains from labelling it as such, I think it is plain that しずか is a noun if viewed through the lens of western linguistic tradition. What else do you call tranquility or quietness? In fact, if you look at the history of -な, it arose as a shortening of -なり, which is the classical 連体形 ending of designation/predication, similar to the modern -である of predication. (Note that this なりis very different from modern なり.) In classical Japanese there were only two adjective forms, both inflected (-く form and -しく form), neither including しずか. Kaustuv Chaudhuri 18:46, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

But that's just the point: can you use "shizuka" in the same contexts as "tranquility", or do you have to use "shizukesa" or some other expliticly nominalised form in those contexts? I've checked a couple of JE dictionaries, and they all give "shizuka-na" for the adjectival usage of "quiet", and "shizukesa, seishi" for the nominal form. The implication is that you CANNOT always use the stem of a na-adjective as a noun, and therefore that "adjectival noun" may not be the best description.

You are asking the wrong question. It is not whether シヅカ can be used to mean 'tranquility' (which it can't), but rather is 'tranquility' a noun (which it is). I myself wouldn't object to calling them na-type adjective, but the term 'adjectival noun' has a long history. Also note that シヅカ is not representative. The vast majority of 形容動詞 are also valid 名詞. (A simple grep through edict shows that there are 1462 words labelled "adj-na", of which 1141 are either "n,adj-na" or "adj-na,n".) Kaustuv 23:01, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

Continuing terminology issues

We need to be very careful about what to call what. I don't think 連体形 ought to be called adjectival form, since adjective already has a billion different conflicting uses. I have been calling it attributive for now. I've also added a section describing the stem forms and the 音便 before the verb and adjective sections, because it seemed to appear haphazardly in the text.
I don't think verb conjugation should be called declension. No linguist I'm familiar with calls it that, not to mention that declension applies to nominals (noun, pronouns, and adjectives like in IE languages), rather than to verbals (verbs and adjectives of Japanese).

Kaustuv 18:08, 2004 Jun 15 (UTC)

1. Keiyoudoushi "decline" because they are "nouns"... Anyway. Inflection is the more general term. -- Zhen Lin, who is not logged in.

provisional/conditional

I noticed some confused usage re: provisional and conditional. I've regularized that, and added a discussion of the differences between the two. Comments welcome adamrice 20:21, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to be harsh, but I find your edit questionable. First of all, I don't see what you were objecting to. The words "provisional" and "conditional" are not present in section 6.6, except in your addition! What were you clarifying, and wouldn't the clarification, if necessary, be better placed in the discussion of verbs? I don't think it adds anything to the discussion of stem forms; indeed, the entire point of section 6 is to isolate stem forms from the myriad endings that apply to the forms. Secondly, both your example sentences are grammatically incorrect; kuru is intransitive (jidoushi), so kanojo cannot take the accusative particle wo. If you wanted these sentences to be illuminating to a beginner, then you have fallen quite short of the mark. Did you want to illustrate the fact that -tara is often used with the nuance of "when" whereas -ba is a pure conditional? If so, I would claim that it is not a question of emphasis at all, and furthermore this fine usage point has no business in section 6. — Kaustuv 15:06, 2004 Jul 16 (UTC)

A few things: 1. It may not be clear from my edit summary, but before my edit, some other parts of this page were inconsistent on ~eba/~tara, referring to both as "conditional." (you can check the edit history to see what I mean.) I fixed that. I also added a section attempting to clarify the difference between the two, because A) it was one of the knottier concepts for me when I was studying Japanese, and B) others are apparently a little unclear about the two; 2. If you think the section I inserted belongs somewhere else, move it. There wasn't an obvious spot on the page for it, so I inserted in at what seemed like a reasonable spot, but I'm certainly open to relocating it; 3. If I made a grammatical error, you can fix it (thanks for pointing that out)--but I'll do so now. 4. I did want to illustrate the difference in nuance between the two, I do think it is a matter of emphasis--but if you've got something better, by all means, put it in there. adamrice 15:36, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Before any such change is attempted, can you explain what you consider the knotty difference between -tara and -ba? Your example with the kanojo is not at all clear to me. There are considerably more differences between -tara and -ba than what you simply call a matter of emphasis. (For an excellent discussion on this topic, see Makino and Tsutsui, Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar pp. 452-457; a summary would be an excellent addition to this Wikipedia article.) — Kaustuv 16:54, 2004 Jul 16 (UTC) Just reading the article over again, I think this bickering is premature. The article could really use a proper discussion of all the various auxiliary verbs and verb endings. I'll take a shot at it over the weekend. Kaustuv

-tara is the kateikei form of the past auxilliary -ta, whereas -re[ba] is for the mizenkei. -ba is another auxilliary that can be bound to the kateikei to change its meaning slightly. (-ba is not added to -tara though)

Actually, -[r]eba is not mizenkei but rather the kateikei/izenkei of the verb + -ba. If it were mizenkei+-ba then you'd have the strange ara.ba, not the common are.ba, etc. Now, you are right that mizenkei+ba was possible in bungo (eg. natsuyama ni\ naku hototogisu\ kokoro araba\ mono omofu ware ni\ kohe na kikase so, from kokinshuu), whose meaning is identical to -tara, but this use survives only in rare cases in modern Japanese (eg. naraba instead of nareba). (I could be wrong of course, since I'm not a native speaker.) -- Kaustuv (not logged in)

Demonstratives table

Kaustuv (since they've been there since you reworked it), what are the two asterisks in the a~ column of the demonstratives table for? They don't seem to line up to any footnotes.... --Aponar Kestrel 03:42, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)

Oops! They just indicate irregular formation, as someone's already added to the footnotes. Incidentally, dare in the first line is also irregularly formed from are, and it should probably also include nani for a more anaphoric which (eg. shinpai ha nani hitotsu mo nai). -- Kaustuv

Superb. Congratulations all!

I don't prowl WP as much as I probably should. I only noticed this article from the FAC list, which I don't look at very often either. I have some quibbles about featured status (see my note at the entry there), but I want to say that you folks have done great work and deserve the highest commendations. If I can figure out how to award a barnstar to the authors (not likely as I think it isn't a group award), I would. Thank you all. ww 19:24, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the objections there. This article has unfinished sections, an arbitrary and inconsistent style and selection of material, and some highly questionable editorial choices (eg. the beginning half-hearted section on history, the sprawling discussion of verb forms). Also, it is currently on the wrong side of trivia/encyclopedia line. Maybe the nominations will attract some much-needed help. (All my opinion, of course.) -- Kaustuv