I don't know about linguists, but Wikipedia talks about which columns of the 五十音図 (アイウエオ kana table) the verb conjugates to. 預かる, 立つ, 聞く, 合う, 喘ぐ, 死ぬ, 遊ぶ, 示す, 読む are all 五段活用 verbs. 下一段 is when the base (未然形 etc. in the table RandomQuotes posts below) ends in an エ-row kana in all conjugations, 上一段 is the same for イ-row.

john555 Wrote:I have NO PROBLEM with using romaji to analyze Japanese grammar (or learn it or teach it). In fact I prefer it. I was being sarcastic in my post because in the past various people on this forum have jumped all over me for preferring to use romaji (at least in the early stages).

Yes, I have Japanese grammars. But I've never seen a word analyzed as azukar-u because Japanese syllables never end in a final "r". It does raise a question, how would a native Japanese linguist analyze "azukar-u" using kana?

Are you sure about that? Because the way it's analyzed doesn't change.

Here you go a chart from Nagoya University
五段動詞「書く」の変化
学校文法 派生文法
未然形 書か・ない kak-ana-i
連用形 書き・ます kak-imas-u
終止形 書く kak-u
連体形 書く kak-u
仮定形 書け・ば kak-eba
命令形 書け kak-e

Oh look, Japanese linguists analyze this just like Vemple said.

Edit: Format and intro from that page.
皆さんが中学校などで習った文法を一般に学校文法と呼びます． しかし，日本語の文法は学校文法だけではありません． 色々な日本語の研究者が様々な文法を提案しており，「研究者の数だけ文法がある」とも言える状況です． その中から，我々の研究室では派生文法という文法に注目しています．

john555 Wrote:I did read what Vempele wrote, and I still don't see the "stem" ending in "r". Is this "stem" a theoretical construct just for linguistic discussion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_stem