Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [linguistics]

言語学. The study of languages.

Linguistics is the study of languages, encompassing morphology, syntax, phonology and phonetics, and meaning (semantics and pragmatics).

This tag is meant for more technical and theoretical questions about Japanese. See also comparative linguistics for comparisons with other languages, and language-change for changes over time.

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Why does Japanese have two kinds of adjectives? (-i adjectives and -na adjectives)

Japanese has two kinds of adjectives known by several terms but the ones I know are i-adjectives and na-adjectives - why? I recall that Japanese adjectives are much more like verbs than in English and most European languages (where they are more…
hippietrail
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Is Japanese really an agglutinative language?

In the linguistics topic of language typology, Japanese is often included in lists of agglutinative (or agglutinating) languages, but when learning or reading about Japanese grammar exclusively this is rarely if ever mentioned. Other examples of…
hippietrail
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Actual phonetic realization of "devoiced" vowels

Descriptions of Japanese phonology (such as Wikipedia's) usually describe high vowels between voiceless consonants (or word-finally) as "devoiced". For example, the pronunciation of ⟨圧⟩ 'pressure' and ⟨悲観⟩ 'pessimism' are described as: /aꜜtu/ →…
Mechanical snail
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Linguistics and Japanese study

Firstly, I apologise if this has been asked before or if I have asked this in the wrong place (should I have asked on the meta site?). I've studied Japanese for (going on) 5 years, now. It's been mostly classroom based, but I gained a lot of…
Jamie Taylor
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Nouns exhibiting vowel fronting

As touched upon in another thread, there are several nouns that exhibit a kind of vowel shift in older forms, where the ending vowel is fronted when the noun is used on its own to become /i/ or /e/, compared to unfronted vowel forms /u/ or /o/ or…
Eiríkr Útlendi
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How should we understand the plain form when used in novels set in the past?

I am trying to understand how the plain form is used in novels set in the past through the explanations in the paper referenced below. I wonder if someone could explain how we should understand the Japanese version of the following examples:…
Tim
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Is there a study available on the similarities between Japanese and Turkish grammars?

No I'm not claiming the Altaic hypothesis so try not to bring that up in answers. Still there are grammatical similarities between Japanese and Turkish such as agglutination and use of postpositions rather than prepositions. My knowledge of Japanese…
hippietrail
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How is readability measured in Japanese?

First of all, I apologize if this question is better suited for the meta. It's a little theoretical, but it's also very much about the Japanese language, so I figured it was fine here. I was looking at the wiki page for readability the other day,…
Mindful
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Does Japanese have any infixes?

In English, we have prefixes, like "pre-"; suffixes, like "-ize"; and arguably, expletives that function as infixes (one classic example is "abso-fucking-lutely"). In Japanese, we also have prefixes, like 超～, 大～; and suffixes, like ～っぽい, ～化{か}.…
senshin
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Does Japanese have morphemes that span two kanji?

I read once (in this comment by Victor Mair on Language Log) that Chinese has single morphemes that span two hanzi. The example given was the Chinese word pútáo 葡萄. At the time, I assumed it applied to Japanese equally, because I assumed 葡萄{ぶどう}…
user1478
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Why is the Japanese term for grammatical case 「格」? How did this translation come to be?

From Google's definition of 格: きまり。法則。標準。  「格式・格言・合格・別格・破格・規格・本格・古格・適格・律令格式(りつりょうきゃくしき)」 《名・造》地位。身分。程度。  「格が違う」 方形に組みあわせた材。  「骨格・格子(こうし)・格天井(ごうてんじょう)」 くる。いたる。とおる。きわめる。  「格物致知」 ただす。ただしい。  「厳格」 《名・造》文法上、文中で語句が他の語句に対する意味的関係。  「格がかわる」 …
Eddie Kal
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Expressing difference between "fluent" and "native speaker" in Japanese

I want to explain the difference between the English linguistic terms "fluent" and "native speaker". I could do this in English, but I'd also like to know if it's possible to do so in Japanese. To be fair, I think it's not just native speakers of…
Andrew Grimm
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動作 as opposed to 作用

The linguistics text I’m reading has a sentence with this fragment: 「動詞の表す動作・作用が[…]」。 Consulting dictionaries just made me more confused; what’s the contrast between the two in this context? “Action” vs. “effect”?
melissa_boiko
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The genesis of pitch accent in Japanese

There is a significant amount of research relating to tonogenesis -- the mechanisms by which a toneless parent language develops tone. But what about the genesis of pitch accent? For instance, the falling tone in Middle Chinese is regularly derived…
jogloran
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Which verb receives a negation in a Japanese sentence?

I can say 歩いて渡る which translates to "to cross by walking". However, if I would like to say "I am not going to cross by walking, but by some other means", would I say 歩かないで渡る or 歩いて渡らない? There are many other examples, most of which involve the…
takwing
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