Well, I was browsing through Tae Kim's guide and a question popped up.

Can you turn a conjugated adjective into an adverb?

For example, is it possible to say:

"He quietly(negative) to run(past)" to say that "He ran but not quietly."

I'll try to slaughter through roomanjization if it makes it more understandable.

Can I say:

"Kare wa shizukaja nai ni hashitta?"

If so, what would adding a past tense adverb to a past or present tense verb mean?

If not, how could I state "He ran but not quietly"?

I'm having trouble with the IME, so I can't kanafy the above, yet.

First of all, "shizuka" is a na-adjective so the negative is "shizuka ja nai" ("shiyanai" is not a possible conjugation of anything). ("hashitsuta" should be "hashitta" also) [EDIT: Perhaps this is not a conjugation problem but just a romaji issue -- shiyanai is しやない in kana, what you want is じゃない, which is "ja nai" or "zya nai".)

Second, although the affirmative uses "ni" (shizuka ni hashiru), the negative is different because in "shizuka ja nai", the "nai" is an i-adjective, so you would come up with "shizuka ja naku hashiru".

Third, while "shizuka ja naku hashiru" is grammatical, it's not a construction I can really remember ever seeing, and google gets 0 hits for it, so that's not used. It's probably like the equally strange English "He not quietly ran".

I think the most normal way to do it is simply to conjugate the verb, so you come up with "shizuka ni hashiranakatta". Just like English "He didn't run quietly", the assumption of that phrase is that he did run, just not quietly.

AFAIK the only time you can directly modify verbs with negatives in this manner is with "naru" and "suru": "shizuka ja naku natta" (It became not quiet) and "shizuka ja naku sita" (I made it not quiet), neither of which sound as odd in Japanese as the English equivalents do.

(There are probably other possibilities I'm not thinking of, though.)

I would say　走ったが静かじゃなっかた。But, who knows...

「静かだ」→「静かに走る」
「静かでない」→「？ 静かでなく走る」

I just don't think any of those are natural (did you try googling any of them?).

I don't see what's wrong with 静かに走らなかった. If it was really important in the context that you explicitly said "He ran, but not quickly", then you could say 走ったけど、静かじゃなかった　as thistime indicated. But in most contexts that's not going to be necessary.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I just don't think any of those are natural (did you try googling any of them?)

The funny thing is, it works for some adjectives:

「彼らしくなく困惑していた」
「恥ずかしくなく言える」
「せわしくなく移動した」

Maybe 「静かでなく走る」is not really that strange?

Quote:btw, how do you change 静かに走らなかった into "he quietly didn't run"? Is it に -> で？

na-adjectives usually modify verbs with に.

Quote:Maybe 「静かでなく走る」is not really that strange?

Maybe it works for some -i adjectives but that still gets 0 google hits (even deleting the る at the end) so I'm still going to say it's strange.

If I heard a sentence 「彼は静かに走らなかった」 I would assume it was in a context like "I told him to run quietly BUT, he didn't run quietly."

And as yudantaiteki said, if it's "He ran, but not quietly", I'll probably say something similar to "彼は走ったが、静かではなかった。"

「らしくなく」「恥ずかしくなく」are verbs, so they're different. For example, 転ぶ事無く走った and 転ばずに走った (ran without falling) are totally fine in any context.

「せわしくなく移動した」seems to be a typo of 「せわしなく移動した」. And せわしない is a complete word by itself, not a combination of せわし + ない. At least that's how I'm using it.

where's a Japanese person when you need one, everyone I know is offline ><

彼は、静かにすることなく走った。

caivano Wrote:where's a Japanese person when you need one, everyone I know is offline ><

Here I am

masaman Wrote:「らしくなく」「恥ずかしくなく」are verbs, so they're different.

Can you elaborate a bit on this?
They look exactly the same to me:

恥ずかしい → 恥ずかしく → 恥ずかしく無い → 恥ずかしく無く
静かだ → 静かで → 静かで無い → 静かで無く

iSoron Wrote:

masaman Wrote:「らしくなく」「恥ずかしくなく」are verbs, so they're different.

Can you elaborate a bit on this?
They look exactly the same to me:

恥ずかしい → 恥ずかしく → 恥ずかしく無い → 恥ずかしく無く
静かだ → 静かで → 静かで無い → 静かで無く

I'm really bad at this that's but I'll try.

静か is a word to describe a state. 彼は静かだ means He's quiet.
恥じる is a word to describe an action you take. 彼は恥じた means something like "He abashed himself."

So, when it is a word to describe a state, like red=赤い, it is hard to use it with a negative. 「リンゴは赤くなく実った」"Apples ripened not red" sounds odd just like it is in English. But if it's a word to describe an action, it is OK to use it with a negative. 「リンゴは落ちずに実った」"Apples ripened without falling" sounds totally legit.

I'm saying this completely from my guts though. But sentences like

彼は遅くなく走った
彼は速くなく走った
彼は力強くなく走った
彼は弱々しくなく走った

all sound strange while

彼は泣かずに走った
彼は遅れずに走った
彼は喋らずに走った
彼は止まらずに走った

sound completely natural, so I think I have some ground here.

So pretty much you're saying that it depends on the adjective. Some describe states, others describe actions, and only the latter can be formed into an adverb when conjugated into a negative form.

What would adding a past tense adverb to a past or present tense verb mean? Is it grammatically correct?

And, can adjectives that describe states be turned into adverbs at all?

Oh, and I made corrections to the original post. Thanks, yudan.

masaman Wrote:

iSoron Wrote:

masaman Wrote:「らしくなく」「恥ずかしくなく」are verbs, so they're different.

Can you elaborate a bit on this?
They look exactly the same to me:

恥ずかしい → 恥ずかしく → 恥ずかしく無い → 恥ずかしく無く
静かだ → 静かで → 静かで無い → 静かで無く

I'm really bad at this that's but I'll try.

静か is a word to describe a state. 彼は静かだ means He's quiet.
恥じる is a word to describe an action you take. 彼は恥じた means something like "He abashed himself."

恥じる is different from 恥ずかしい, though. The former is a verb, the later is an adjective.

Quote:So, when it is a word to describe a state, like red=赤い, it is hard to use it with a negative. 「リンゴは赤くなく実った」"Apples ripened not red" sounds odd just like it is in English. But if it's a word to describe an action, it is OK to use it with a negative. 「リンゴは落ちずに実った」"Apples ripened without falling" sounds totally legit.

落ちる is a verb as well.

Quote:I'm saying this completely from my guts though. But sentences like

彼は遅くなく走った
彼は速くなく走った
彼は力強くなく走った
彼は弱々しくなく走った

all sound strange while

彼は泣かずに走った
彼は遅れずに走った
彼は喋らずに走った
彼は止まらずに走った

sound completely natural, so I think I have some ground here.

The first group is all adjectives (or i-adjectives) while the second group is all verbs.

Back to the OP:

Quote:What would adding a past tense adverb to a past or present tense verb mean? Is it grammatically correct?

I don't believe there's any way to do this. You can modify nouns with past tense things, but not predicates. English doesn't have past tense adverbs either, does it? Does any language?

Quote:And, can adjectives that describe states be turned into adverbs at all?

All adjectives describe states, as far as I know. They can all be adverbs, it just depends on the context whether it actually makes sense or is natural.

mmm. I really am bad at this. Let me think it over and come back tomorrow. There are bunch of guys who are really good at explaining these things here so I probably won't need to come back but we'll see.

OK. I think I got it.

動詞 + negative + 動詞 is always OK. Like yudantaiteki said,
彼は泣かずに走った、彼は遅れずに走った、彼は喋らずに走った、彼は止まらずに走った
are all 動詞 + negative + 動詞. That's why they sounded natural. These aren't adjectives so please disregard my previous post about this.

Now, 形容動詞（na adjective） + negative + 動詞 sounds really odd.
静かでなく走る 、高速でなく走る 、奇麗でなく飾る 、赤色でなく塗る

They all sound incorrect. There may be some exceptions, like 奇麗じゃなく見える
sounds somewhat OK to me if it's in a conversation, but that's the only thing I can think of.

形容詞（i adjective）+ negative + 動詞 sounds a bit better.
うるさくなく走る、速くなく走る、美しくなく飾る、赤くなく塗る、明るくなく照らす

I may use this type of expressions if the context and the combination of the words are right. For instance, 美しくなく飾る sounds odd to me but 恥ずかしくなく喋る sounds OK. It seems this sounds more natural when the verb is followed by 助動詞 られる like うるさくなく喋れる、熱くなく食べれる etc. These are all colloquial expressions and I'd avoid them in formal writing though.

Dragonsheep Wrote:What would adding a past tense adverb to a past or present tense verb mean? Is it grammatically correct?

I don't quite get this part. Can you give me an example?

masaman Wrote:Now, 形容動詞（na adjective） + negative + 動詞 sounds really odd.
静かでなく走る 、高速でなく走る 、奇麗でなく飾る 、赤色でなく塗る

They all sound incorrect. There may be some exceptions, like 奇麗じゃなく見える
sounds somewhat OK to me if it's in a conversation, but that's the only thing I can think of.

Do you agree that なる and する are exceptions to this? Is 静かじゃなくなった natural?

yudantaiteki Wrote:

masaman Wrote:Now, 形容動詞（na adjective） + negative + 動詞 sounds really odd.
静かでなく走る 、高速でなく走る 、奇麗でなく飾る 、赤色でなく塗る

They all sound incorrect. There may be some exceptions, like 奇麗じゃなく見える
sounds somewhat OK to me if it's in a conversation, but that's the only thing I can think of.

Do you agree that なる and する are exceptions to this? Is 静かじゃなくなった natural?

For the most part, yes.

「静かじゃなくなった」: natural.
「静かではなくなった」: natural, but I prefer something like 静かとは言えなくなった better.
「静かじゃなくする」: natural, but a bit slangy.
「静かではなくする」: a little odd. I'd find some other expression like 静かではない状態にする or 静かさを破る.

masaman Wrote:

Dragonsheep Wrote:What would adding a past tense adverb to a past or present tense verb mean? Is it grammatically correct?

I don't quite get this part. Can you give me an example?

I was wondering about the posibility of a past tense adverb. I'm pretty sure yudan was right in saying that it was impossible.

masaman Wrote:

caivano Wrote:where's a Japanese person when you need one, everyone I know is offline ><

Here I am

cool... thanks for the explanations!