用言 ("use" words)

用言(ようげん)

“Use” words

Words that describe what’s going on with the grammatical subject (the “doer”) in a sentence. These words form the predicate and describe the action, existence, nature, or state of the subject (what the subject is doing). The character 用 means how something is used or serviced.

用言(ようげん) are by far the most important part of Japanese grammar. Literally everything else might be omitted in a sentence, but Japanese clauses always include an explicit 述語 (predicate) containing at least one 用言.

There are three types of 用言: 動詞(どうし), 形容詞(けいようし), and 形容動詞(けいようどうし). We will explore each in turn.

動詞(どうし) (verbs)

Nature/character

動詞 have three identifying characteristics:

1. They conjugate or inflect.

   Examples: 読む・読まない・読みます・読めば・…

2. They are freestanding words that can form a 述語 (predicate).

   Examples: 本を 読む(述語).

3. They end with kana from the う column in the 50-音 kana table.

   Examples: 思う・聞く・話す・立つ.

Grammatical function

動詞 can have four different functions within a sentence:

1. They can form the 述語(じゅつご) (predicate):

   Example:

   • 花が 咲いた(述語)

2. They can become 修飾語(しゅうしょくご) (modifiers):

   Examples:

   • 歩く(修飾語) 習慣を身につける

     Translation: “[I] acquire [the] walking habit”

   • 早く 起きるように(修飾語) 努力する

     Translation: “[I] earlier waking endeavor”

     Transliteration: “To earlier-wake-endeavor”

3. They can become the 主語(しゅご) (subject) by using particles like 「の が・のは・のも」:

   Example:

   • 遠くに 見えるのが(主語) 富士山だ

     Translation: “You can see Mount Fuji in the distance”

     Transliteration: ”Seen-thing in the distance is-Mount-Fuji”

4. They can become 接続語(せつぞくご) (conjunctions) connecting clauses.

   Example:

   • いくら 待っても(接続語) 来ない

     Translation: “[He/she/it] won’t come no matter how long you wait”

     Transliteration “[you] indeterminate-wait-even, [he/she/it] won’t come”

TODO EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT

Japanese is a predicate-centric language. The words at the end of a clause tend to be the most important because that’s where the predicate normally resides.

As shown at the top of the parts-of-speech diagram, there are three parts of speech that can be “inflected.” These are standalone words that can become predicates all on their own (in Japanese: 単独(たんどく)で述語(じゅつご)となるもの).

動詞 (verbs)

There are only three types of 動詞 in Japanese:

• 一段(いちだん)動詞: These congugate while keeping the final “vowel” in the same 段 (column) of the 50-音 (50-sound) chart and adding a suffix: 食べる・食べない・食べます・食べれます・食べよう

• 五段(ごだん)動詞: These conjugate by replacing the final “vowel” with sounds from five different columns: 行かない・行きます・行く・行けます・行こう

• 変格(へんかく)動詞: These are the only two special cases: する and 来る which conjugate weirdly.

Please refer to this excellent article about verb conjugation on Tofugu for more details about how to conjugate/inflect verbs of each type.

形容詞(けいようし)

形容詞 (so-called “い-adjectives”) indicate nature or state and end with the kana character い.

形容詞 always end with い.

Examples:

• 白(しろ)い (is-white)

• 近(ちか)い (is-near).

形容動詞(けいようどうし)

形容動詞 (so-called “な-adjectives”) indicate nature or state and end with the literal kana character だ.

The “stem form” of 形容動詞 can end with any kana character.

In particular, note that some 形容動詞 have a stem that ends with い. This can make it difficult for learners to remember which is which.

For example, the word きれい (pretty) is 形容動詞, not 形容詞 despite ending with い. It’s the stem of きれいだ (is-pretty). There is no rule or trick to recognizing these, just rote memorization.

Examples:

• 静(しず)かだ (is-quiet)

• 大変( たいへん ) だ (is-serious, is-grave)

“is-verbs” not “adjectives”

Note the form of the English translations for the 形容詞 and 形容動詞 examples. They include, for example, “is-white” and “is-quiet”, not just “white” and “quiet”.

This idea may be contentious for some, but the author believes strongly that Japanese grammarians consider 形容詞 and 形容動詞 more like “is-verbs” than adjectives!

To an English speaker, “is-white” and “is-quiet” aren’t words, but it’s clear that they mean the same thing as the two-word expressions “is white” and “is quiet”. Thinking of them as hyphenated “is-verbs” like this makes it clear that these are single, “freestanding” words. It helps us to think like Japanese natives.

Remember: with Japanese grammar, the two “first class” categories of words are 用言 (predicate words) and 体言 (subject/object) words. These roughly correlate to verbs and nouns in English.

To a Japanese native, 白い and 静かだ (with the い and だ included) are 用言. They are standalone words that can form a predicate all on their own. They are primarily verb-like.

They aren’t second-class words that merely modify or qualify 体言. They are first-class parts of speech that form predicates.

In contrast, the English word “white,” for example, is either an adjective or a noun. It isn’t “verb-like” at all. To use it in a predicate, we must add another word like “is”: ”◯ is white”.

But 形容詞 and 形容動詞 act as predicates all on their own. That’s why thinking of them as compound words (“is-white”, for example) is advantageous.

Japanese natives think of these word-types as primarily 用言, and only incidentally as “adjective-like”. You should, too.

The author feels this flip-flopped style of instruction (thinking of them “adjectives” rather than “is-verbs”) causes confusion and leads to students uttering “eihongo”¹ sentences like 「東京は近いだ」— that extra だ is grammatically wrong and exactly equivalent to saying “Tokyo is is near” (with an extra “is”).

Thinking of 形容詞 words as meaning “is-◯” helps English speakers remember that they are verb-like words that can stand on their own in a predicate as well as describe nouns.

There is no い particle

The final い in 形容詞 is part of the word, not an “い particle”! There is no such thing as an い particle.

You aren’t turning a word into a 形容詞 by adding い, the 形容詞 already has い as part of the word.

The word 白(しろ) (white) is 名詞, a noun. You you might use it in a chess match, for example, to say things like 「白が勝(か)った」(“white won”).

The word 白(しろ)い (is-white) is 形容詞, and is an entirely different word than 白.

This is another reason the author believes it better to think of 白い as “is-white” rather than just “white”. It helps to reenforce the idea that it’s a separate word on its own. Obviously they are related, but they are different words with different grammatical types. They aren’t the same word with い appended.

Because Japanese grammar considers an explicit subject optional,

• 行(い )く

• 寒(さむ )い

• 静(しず )かだ

(a 動詞, 形容詞, and 形容動詞 respectively) are complete sentences!

Conjugating 用言

Changing the suffix of 用言 modifies the meaning in various ways. These are called “conjugations” or maybe “inflections” (ask a linguist).

Syntactically, they remain 用言. These conjugations/inflections don’t change how we diagram a sentence. They do change the semantic meaning however, so they are worth learning.

Note that all three types of 用言 can be modified in this way, not just 動詞.

Examples of modifying the plain or dictionary form of 用言:

• Changing tense:

  • 食・べる → 食・べた (“eat” → “ate”)

  • 美味し・い → 美味し・かった (“is-delicious” → “was-delicious”)

  • きれい・だ → きれい・だった (“is-pretty” → “was-pretty”)

  • etc.

• Negating meanings:

  • 食・べる → 食・べない (“eat” → “not eat”)

  • 美味し・い → 美味し・くない (“delicious” → “not delicious”)

  • きれい・だ → きれい・じゃない (“pretty” → “not pretty”)

• Changing to passive voice:

  • 食・べる → 食・べられた (“to eat” → “to have eaten”)

  The concept of voice only applies to true 動詞 (they can be active or passive). It doesn’t apply to 形容詞 and 形容動詞 because they are about nature or state — there is no action, passive or otherwise.

There are many more ways to inflect 用言 than these. Please refer to the suggested grammar resources for more exhaustive investigations.

The suffixes added to the end are called 助動詞(じょどうし), by the way. They will be discussed on the page about たいげん and other types.