ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how Japanese speakers formulate such invitations and proposals to negotiate joint actions. An invitation often takes the form of a negative question with rising intonation in Japanese. In English, invitations often involve expressions for desire such as want and would like, but their closest Japanese counterpart V-tai form is not used for this purpose. In polite speech, people can use the polite negative -masen form of the verb followed by the question particle ka. In casual speech, they can use the plain negative -nai form of a verb. They can use these forms either to invite someone to join them in an activity or to invite someone to perform an action on their own. In the latter situation, they can also use the request form te kudasai. Grammar points are followed by contextualized examples and exercises which allow students to reinforce and consolidate their learning.
