The linguistic connection between the so-called "copula" だ and the verb ある has never been completely clear to me. Here's what I understand so far (please correct me if I'm wrong): basically, だ is a modern variant of である. A similar pairing is possible between some other "ある forms" and "だ forms":

である => だ
であった => だった
であろう => だろう

で(は)ない => ???
で(は)なかった => ???

であります => です
でありました => でした
でありましょう => でしょう

で(は)ありません => ???
で(は)<??? formal/polite counterpart of なかった ???> => ???

(BTW, some of the hypothesized "ある forms" above look more plausible to me than others. E.g. である looks more plausible to me than であろう, since I have seen ある by itself, but never so for あろう.)

This equivalence between "ある forms" and "だ forms" would explain (almost) why some standard sentence patterns use "だ forms" and other semantically similar ones instead use "ある forms". For example:

It's Monday: 月曜日です(=であります)。
It's not Monday: 月曜日ではありません。

I wrote "almost" above because the parallel is not perfect: the negative "ある forms" have a は that is not present in the affirmative ones. If I had to guess, I'd venture that the は used to be present in the affirmative "ある forms" also but got dropped over time. In any case, this は remains a puzzle for me.

There are other holes in this picture. The biggest one is the fact that there are common forms, like ありませんでした and あるでしょう, that are mixtures of an "ある form" and a "だ form". I don't know how to fit these forms in the scheme outlined above, or explain them otherwise.

In particular, I find the absence of a suitable formal/polite counterpart for でなかった particularly puzzling. Of course, one could postulate でありませんでした, but this form includes a "だ form" (でした), so it would be hard to understand でありませんでした as a precursor to some hypothesized "だ form".

One other hole is indicated by the missing "だ forms" in the table above (shown with ???). Do they exist (even if they are obscure or literary)?

Yet one more puzzlement is the relation, if any, between the particle で, as in

受付で聞いてみてください。
あとで電話します。

and the で in である, で(は)ない, etc.

If anyone knows of a linguistic account that sheds light on this ある/だ/で mess, please let me know.

TIA!

gfb345 Wrote:The linguistic connection between the so-called "copula" だ and the verb ある has never been completely clear to me. Here's what I understand so far (please correct me if I'm wrong): basically, だ is a modern variant of である.

Yes. で is originally from にて (に being the a form of the classical Japanese copula, and て the same as modern て). You still see にて occasionally in formal writing.

Quote:(BTW, some of the hypothesized "ある forms" above look more plausible to me than others. E.g. である looks more plausible to me than であろう, since I have seen ある by itself, but never so for あろう.)

であろう is used in formal writing.

Quote:the negative "ある forms" forms have a は that is not present in the affirmative ones.

The は is not grammatically necessary. You do occasionally see Xでない, although ではない/じゃない is much more common. This is just the tendency of は to go with negative forms, although ではない has become a fixed expression in most cases.

ではある also occurs (as does でもある).

Quote:There are other holes in this picture. The biggest one is the fact that there are common forms, like ありませんでした and あるでしょう, that are mixtures of an "ある form" and a "だ form". I don't know how to fit these forms in the scheme outlined above, or explain them otherwise.

The explanation is that です has "outgrown" its roots and is now used in many places as a generic politeness marker that goes in places even where だ cannot go. This is also why you can say 高いです but not *高いだ.

(For the second one, あるだろう is standard Japanese, although あろう is found sometimes in formal language.)

Quote:In particular, I find the absence of a suitable formal/polite counterpart for でなかった particularly puzzling. Of course, one could postulate でありませんでした, but this form includes a "だ form" (でした), so it would be hard to understand でありませんでした as a precursor to some hypothesized "だ form".

You don't need full counterparts for every form. (You don't have to postulate でありませんでした, it exists.)

Quote:One other hole is indicated by the missing "だ forms" in the table above (shown with ???). Do they exist (even if they are obscure or literary)?

No.

Quote:Yet one more puzzlement is the relation, if any, between the particle で, as in

鵜k付けで聞いてみてください。
あとで電話します。

and the で in である, で(は)ない, etc.

There is some etymological relation, but in modern Japanese, there are two different で's -- one is a particle, the other is the -te form of だ (which is what you have in である and でない).

Quote:で(は)ありません => ???
で(は)<??? formal/polite counterpart of なかった ???> => ???

ではありません　＝＞　ではない　＝＞じゃない (です)
ではなかった　=＞　じゃなかった（です）

I think the problem here is the attempt to break the items up into components. Like with でない and あとで. Looking at them as fixed phrases makes them far more comprehensible than で + ない and あと + で.

Quote:If I had to guess, I'd venture that the は used to be present in the affirmative "ある forms" also but got dropped over time. In any case, this は remains a puzzle for me.

I believe it has more to due with negatives often taking a は.

資格はない
明日はない

Quote:In particular, I find the absence of a suitable formal/polite counterpart for でなかった particularly puzzling. Of course, one could postulate でありませんでした, but this form includes a "だ form" (でした), so it would be hard to understand でありませんでした as a precursor to some hypothesized "だ form".

でなかった(の)です

If I remember correctly, （の）です at the end of a phrase is like a universal polite form.

I think you've gone past over analysis. Google some examples, read, get some context.

yudantaiteki Wrote:(You don't have to postulate でありませんでした, it exists.)

Well, I had to postulate it because I'd never seen it! : )

Thanks!

IceCream Wrote:I dunno, isn't it that they have to take a は because で talks about an actualised state, which makes sense with ある, but doesn't make sense with ない unless the は is there to mark it off as otherwise it'd be a direct contradiction?

You tell me. I only observed the pattern. The "why" escapes me in words. That's why I try to keep it as simple as possible.

良い資格ではない。
合格する資格はない。

Like I can recognize the difference between these two, but it's hard to put it in words. What I get for never consciously studying grammar I guess.

は has a tendency to go with negatives because of its contrastive meaning.

You're probably familiar with the prototypical use of this to say something like 田中さんは来なかった -- that is, Tanaka-san didn't come (but other people probably did). Or ゴルフはしない -- I don't play golf (but I probably play other things). It's even easier to see in the positive forms -- 田中さんは来た is very often used to imply that other people who should have come did not.

So if you say 先生ではない, it's like "He's not a teacher (but he's probably something else)". As I said, I think that in the case of ではない, the form has become somewhat fixed and so the ではない is used in many cases where the contrastive は isn't really needed. We can't say that it's *completely* fixed because でない does still occur, and it's not all that rare (uncommon, perhaps).

Quote:I dunno, isn't it that they have to take a は because で talks about an actualised state, which makes sense with ある, but doesn't make sense with ない unless the は is there to mark it off as otherwise it'd be a direct contradiction?

I think there's something to that. There is a relation between 先生ではない and あの先生ではできない in that it's really the same form of noun + では + predicate. But I'm not confident enough to really explain the connection (Japanese: The Spoken Language hints at it but doesn't offer a very detailed explanation.)

Quote:I think you've gone past over analysis.

It depends. Some people are interested in linguistics, and I think it's fine to do this kind of thing if you're interested in it. It's not necessarily the most helpful thing to do to learn how to understand or use the forms, though.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

gfb345 Wrote:Yet one more puzzlement is the relation, if any, between the particle で, as in

鵜k付けで聞いてみてください。
あとで電話します。

and the で in である, で(は)ない, etc.

There is some etymological relation, but in modern Japanese, there are two different で's -- one is a particle, the other is the -te form of だ (which is what you have in である and でない).

I did not notice it at first, but there's a circularity here. If it is the case that だ comes from である, then it is hard for me to see how the で in である could be the -te form of だ. There seems to be a chicken/egg situation here.

Well, that's describing it in simplified terms from the modern grammar. If you want to avoid the circularity, you have to say that the で in である is an sound contraction of にて, the classical 連用形 of the copula plus て (which it itself the 連用形 of the perfective つ, but that's not important).

So it's にてあり -> にてある -> である ->　であ (according to Koujien) -> だ

Because にて is used mostly in written language nowadays, it's easier to take だ as the standard and say that で is the -te form of だ, even though that distorts the etymology.

(As a sidenote on the particle で, it is also sometimes にて in the written language so there's clearly a strong etymological link between the particle and the -te form of だ, although it's useful to separate them when talking about modern Japanese.)

yudantaiteki Wrote:Well, that's describing it in simplified terms from the modern grammar. If you want to avoid the circularity, you have to say that the で in である is an sound contraction of にて, the classical 連用形 of the copula plus て (which it itself the 連用形 of the perfective つ, but that's not important).

So it's にてあり -> にてある -> である ->　であ (according to Koujien) -> だ

Because にて is used mostly in written language nowadays, it's easier to take だ as the standard and say that で is the -te form of だ, even though that distorts the etymology.

(As a sidenote on the particle で, it is also sometimes にて in the written language so there's clearly a strong etymological link between the particle and the -te form of だ, although it's useful to separate them when talking about modern Japanese.)

This is all very interesting, and very new, to me.

Thanks!

(I really need to get myself a decent linguistics-oriented reference grammar of Japanese. I thought that Tsujimura's An introduction to Japanese linguistics would be it, but its atrocious index makes it too hard to use as a reference. Martin's massive A reference grammar of Japanese is out-of-print, and used copies are unaffordable. If anyone has any other recommendation, please chime in.)

IceCream Wrote:only niwasaburo's guide...
http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/shuyoumokuji.html

Thanks for the pointer! It's still beyond my reading abilities, but I'm thrilled to know about it all the same. Somehow it's very cool to read about Japanese in Japanese! (Maybe this is because one gets the feeling that the language is being described in its own terms, rather than forced to fit a schema that was devised to describe European languages.) With rikaikun I may be able to slog through it.

IceCream Wrote:...but, "an introduction to japanese liguistics" really does seem like a good guide.

I think it is a good book overall, with a lot of interesting content, but it's really an omnibus with a little bit of everything, from phonetics to language acquisition. Especially after taking your very useful advice of using Google books to search in it and trying a few searches, I've come to the conclusion that it is no substitute for a systematic and comprehensive linguistics-oriented (as opposed to language-learning oriented) reference grammar.

Thanks!

gfb345 Wrote:I really need to get myself a decent linguistics-oriented reference grammar of Japanese. I thought that Tsujimura's An introduction to Japanese linguistics would be it, but its atrocious index makes it too hard to use as a reference. Martin's massive A reference grammar of Japanese is out-of-print, and used copies are unaffordable. If anyone has any other recommendation, please chime in.)

Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar
Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar

Worth every penny, all of them.

They're very good books, but they're not linguistically-oriented reference grammars.

I don't think there are any linguistically-oriented reference grammars that are easy to use and good for learning. The grammar explanations in Japanese: The Spoken Language are, to a certain extent, but they're written in a "pedagogical grammar" which isn't going to cover things like historical derivation or 連用形 or the like.

Define linguistically-oriented reference grammars. I would rate them all far more linguistically-oriented than saburou's e-book.

Well, the definition depends on the person, but at least he probably means something that would have answered his original question about だ and である, which DBJ/DIJ/DAJ does not.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Well, the definition depends on the person, but at least he probably means something that would have answered his original question about だ and である, which DBJ/DIJ/DAJ does not.

It's covered. である is explained to be formal non-polite japanese, だ is non-formal non-polite. They cover it quite a lot in that section.