Hi there!!
I've been studying for 1 year and a half using Ajatt and studying grammar on my own. The thing is, I've always avoided the technical part of the language, but right now I REALLY need to know them for a couple of reasons.

So is there anybody so kind to explain (with -EXAMPLES-,not tech : )終止形、未然形、連用形 and so forth to me? And what B1,B2,B3 etc is supposed to mean? I didn't find a clear explanation on the internet, and the grammar books I have take for granted that you already know what they are.

Thanks a lot for your help!!

cactus

B1 etc isn't anything I've heard of.. It's probably just something made up by a specific grammar guide. For the verb forms just look on wikipedia for plenty of examples, or search the forums (I've posted about it before).

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/活用#.E6.B4.B...8.E5.BD.A2

未然形 (Imperfect, e.g. in 読まない) 連用形 (Conjunctional, 読みます) 終止形 (Final, e.g. 読む) 連体形 (Attributive, e.g. 読む本) 仮定形 (Hypothetical, e.g. 読めば) and 命令形 (Imperative, e.g. 読め) are the forms Japanese verbs and adjectives can take when they are conjugated. There's also the 音便形, which "evolved" from the 未然形 (Euphoric, e.g. 読もう)
For verbs and i-Adjectives 連体形 and 終止形 are the same, however na-adjectives need either だ or な. You can read more about this on Wikipedia.

I don't know what B1, B2,.. are though.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:There's also the 音便形, which "evolved" from the 未然形 (Euphoric, e.g. 読もう)

There is no such thing as "an" 音便形. て form, 食べてる (without the い), すげえ, 読もう, キモイ, etc are ALL 音便形.

Go pick up a 古語辞典, there will be a chart in there somewhere that will explain it pretty well (in modern Japanese too).

But just for your info, knowing about those different categories is pretty much useless unless you plan to study Classical Japanese (古文). In modern there really will never be any confusion which category it falls into. Once you get back to 古文 however, it's often important to know what's going on with verbs because of the nature of how they inflect.

For example, in classical when ば is used it can either mean "if" or "when," and this is determined by which form the verb is in.

http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Japanese...0231135246

^-- the bible

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Evil_Dragon Wrote:There's also the 音便形, which "evolved" from the 未然形 (Euphoric, e.g. 読もう)

There is no such thing as "an" 音便形. て form, 食べてる (without the い), すげえ, etc are ALL 音便形.

Depends on who you ask. There are either six or seven stem forms, with or without "an" 音便形.
In classical Japanese grammar there is of course no such thing.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Evil_Dragon Wrote:There's also the 音便形, which "evolved" from the 未然形 (Euphoric, e.g. 読もう)

There is no such thing as "an" 音便形. て form, 食べてる (without the い), すげえ, etc are ALL 音便形.

Depends on who you ask. There are either six or seven stem forms, with or without "an" 音便形.
In classical Japanese grammar there is of course no such thing.

What makes 読もう an 音便形 and 読んで not one? Calling one onbin and the other te form (but not onbin) is definitely non-standard terminology.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Evil_Dragon Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:There is no such thing as "an" 音便形. て form, 食べてる (without the い), すげえ, etc are ALL 音便形.

Depends on who you ask. There are either six or seven stem forms, with or without "an" 音便形.
In classical Japanese grammar there is of course no such thing.

What makes 読もう an 音便形 and 読んで not one? Calling one onbin and the other te form (but not onbin) is definitely non-standard terminology.

How should I know? It's just that different authors use different terms. I read at least one grammar that declared 音便形 (or maybe 意向形, or both, I don't clearly remember) as a stem form of its own that is derived from the 未然形. Some modern grammars might even "fuse" 終止形 and 連体形 (hypothetically speaking, I never read one myself).

Do you have an example of a text that says 音便形 is a specific form in and of itself?

I can't help but think that you either mis-remember it, or you were reading a faulty internet grammar (Tae Kim makes up most of the terminology that he uses from what I've seen for example).

It's kind of nonsense to make a whole form called "音便形"...

未然形 (Imperfect form)
連用形 (Conjunctive form)
終止形 (Final form)
連体形 (Attributive form)
仮定形 (Potential form)
命令形 (Imperative form)
音便形 (easy to pronounce form) huh?

音便 is something that happens to other forms, it isn't a form itself.

終止形 and 連体形 are fused by grammars that don't regard adjectives and verbs as the same class of thing, since for verbs they are identical in modern (except apparently Okinawa-ben).

Jarvik7 Wrote:Do you have an example of a text that says 音便形 is a specific form in and of itself?

If I did I would have told you already. Maybe it's something I read or was told in Japan, I'm not entirely sure. Or I am being fooled by my memory.

Maybe this can be helpful: http://grammar.nihongoresources.com/doku.php
an online japanese grammar with a few references to classical japanese in explaining grammatical rules (probably it's a more academic-style grammar compared to tae kim, harder to understand at the beginning, but in my opinion it's a nice reading if you like japanese and want to know some grammar point deeper). Hope it can help.

cactus Wrote:And what B1,B2,B3 etc is supposed to mean?

I remember using some grammar books which used the B1-5 system in the past.
Iirc they use that to indicate the verbal "base" (does it make any sense?) and the number stands for the vowel in which the base would end in a godan conjugation (japanese order).
For example if we were to pick the verb 書く, B1 would be 書か-, B2 書き- and so on, then the grammar would tell you to add -ない　to a B1 to get the plain negative form, B1+せる for the causative form, B2+ます etc...
I'm not 100% sure and I cannot seem to find those books to check, so I could be way off.

That sounds like a pretty godawful way to hide the names of the verb forms from the learner.. even worse than calling verbs type 1/2.

Jarvik7 Wrote:That sounds like a pretty godawful way to hide the names of the verb forms from the learner.. even worse than calling verbs type 1/2.

It certainly is.
I just found out that one of the grammar books that uses this system is some kind of pocket-sized grammar, which comes in a format dangerously resembling that of traveler's dictionaries, definitely not aimed at a serious learner.
Though I'm pretty sure I've seen it used in grammar books aimed at college students.

Seizar Wrote:

cactus Wrote:And what B1,B2,B3 etc is supposed to mean?

I remember using some grammar books which used the B1-5 system in the past.
Iirc they use that to indicate the verbal "base" (does it make any sense?) and the number stands for the vowel in which the base would end in a godan conjugation (japanese order).
For example if we were to pick the verb 書く, B1 would be 書か-, B2 書き- and so on, then the grammar would tell you to add -ない　to a B1 to get the plain negative form, B1+せる for the causative form, B2+ます etc...
I'm not 100% sure and I cannot seem to find those books to check, so I could be way off.

Can't be like that since it goes up to B6,anyway I kind of understand now from my sources. They indicate various 形 ,without any really logical sense. You may have read this on either Kubota's or Mastrangelo's grammar. In either way, that's stupid.
I'm well aware it's not really useful to know this unless you study linguistics, but right now I'm not the one choosing what to study, so to say.

Thanks everyone for the help

cactus

I don't think that's the most useful way to study modern Japanese anyway -- the terms aren't even really that good for classical Japanese (they're holdovers from 18th century kokugaku studies). Unfortunately you do have to be familiar with the terms if you see them in Japanese works (or if you have to be familiar with them because of some external situation). It's the same annoying problem that you see in Western linguistics as well; everyone knows the terms and categories suck but it's so hard to reform that that nobody bothers, even linguists.

Jarvik7 Wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Japanese...0231135246

^-- the bible

Sorry Jarvik, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. While the book certainly explains Classical Japanese, it's far too "gaijin-esque" for my taste. Personally, I think you'd be better off with this http://eres.ulib.albany.edu.libproxy.alb...&page=docs#

What is "gaijin-esque" about it? The only complaint I've seen about it is that it sticks too much to the traditional 国語学 method, but other than that it seems like a decent book. The book you linked to seems fine as well. (How does it deal with the cases like 知れり?)

Jarvik7 Wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Japanese...0231135246

^-- the bible

I actually took a semester of Classical Japanese in Haruo Shirane's office (though he was on sabbatical at the time :-)), and we used that book while it was in its "beta" version. I thought it was pretty good though I don't really have any other point of reference.