ABSTRACT

T HIS subject can naturally be treated only in outline here, since its full discussion involves all questions of etymology as distinct from accidence.

tori ga naku naku tori karigane no naku nari (K.)

the bird sings a singing bird it is the wild geese crying

in some instances these specialized forms. Thus in the standard modern colloquial the specialized predicative forms of adjectives are obsolete, and the distinction between predicative and attributive forms of verbs is not observed. We can now say tatsu hito as well as hito ga tatsu, yoi hito for yoki hito, and hito ga yoi instead of hito yoshi. The first of these examples provides an instance where Japanese has proceeded farther than English in the direction of simplification and the reliance upon significant word order, since it is obviously simpler to say tatsu hito, 'stand man', than' a man who stands'.