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It is known to Japanese learners that the Japanese verb isn't affected by the subject (number or gender). Today, a linguistics professor of my university told me he heard from his teacher that ancient Japanese had some kind of plural declension.

I tried to search on google and on this site but couldn't find any information. So I'm asking if you know something about it.

Flaw
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Dor Nisenhouse
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    Are you sure that your professor was talking about plural conjugation for verbs? If so, my honest feeling is that it sounds groundless. I wonder which period your professor referred to as “ancient Japanese.” Suffixes for nouns which signify plurality such as たち, ら, and ども have existed and still exist in Japanese, and this might be called “some kind of plural conjugation,” although showing plurality is not required grammatically like English. – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 19 '12 at 22:10
  • I'm sure he meant the plural conjugation of verbs in comparison to English. The idea was that Japanese used to address other people using third person (plural?) only, which made plural and singular meaningless. – Dor Nisenhouse Dec 19 '12 at 23:06
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    I cannot follow the logic. Japanese does not have the distinction among first person, second person, and third person, but why does it make the distinction between singular and plural meaningless? – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 19 '12 at 23:24
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    Also, if the distinction between singular and plural was meaningless, doesn’t it imply that Japanese did not have plurality conjugation? Why should we have some meaningless grammatical elements? I am afraid that I am totally missing the point of your logic. – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 19 '12 at 23:26
  • I meant that there was no use to the singular conjugation (the same with person: it is like the only conjugation is for third person). So now it seems (and practically is) that there is no other conjugation. What I wanted to know is if there were some kind of other conjugations in ancient Japanese. – Dor Nisenhouse Dec 20 '12 at 00:59
  • Now you have concluded that there was no conjugation of a verb according to the number of its subject. You might want to clarify what your question really is and edit the post accordingly. (This will be my last comment in this thread.) – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 20 '12 at 01:20
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    Is it possible you could ask the person who originally said it for more information? –  Dec 20 '12 at 15:06
  • I asked him about that the day after I uploaded this, but no new information was given. Sorry I cannot give more information. – Dor Nisenhouse Dec 21 '12 at 19:13

2 Answers2

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(This is my comment with small changes in wording.)

Japanese have some suffixes for nouns which signify plurality such as たち, ら, and ども, and this might be referred to as “some kind of plural declension,” although showing plurality is not required grammatically like English.

If your professor was talking about conjugating a verb according to the number of its subject in Japanese in some old period, I would say that that sounds like a groundless claim. As far as I know, there is no evidence that Japanese had the conjugation like that. (But I am not a linguist.)

Tsuyoshi Ito
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Notice that he said "declension", i.e., a noun suffix etc. Probably -ra and -tachi were much more productive in Old Japanese, and what little I know of older Japanese it seems to be the case.

ithisa
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    I am not sure what the distinction between conjugation and declension is when used in the Japanese grammar, but I am afraid that you are misled by the edits which other people made to the question. The [original question](http://japanese.stackexchange.com/revisions/9805/1) said “conjunction,” which was probably a typo for “conjugation.” – Tsuyoshi Ito Feb 02 '13 at 04:39
  • @TsuyoshiIto, "declension" refers to changes in nouns depending on case, number, gender, etc., while "conjugation" refers to changes in verbs depending on tense, aspect, number, etc. Some linguists have described 格助詞 as "case suffixes", so Japanese nouns would have "case declensions" in this model. Most folks now seem to view 格助詞 as independent particles, and to view Japanese nouns as unchanging and without declension. – Eiríkr Útlendi Dec 17 '20 at 19:00