Japanese conjugation (mizenkei base)

Japanese conjugation, like the conjugation of verbs of many other languages, allows verbs to be morphologically modified to change their meaning or grammatical function. In Japanese, the beginning of a word (the stem) is preserved during conjugation, while the ending of the word is altered in some way to change the meaning (this is the inflectional suffix). Japanese verb conjugations are independent of person, number and gender (they do not depend on whether the subject is I, you, he, she, we, etc.); the conjugated forms can express meanings such as negation, present and past tense, volition, passive voice, causation, imperative and conditional mood, and ability. There are also special forms for conjunction with other verbs, and for combination with particles for additional meanings.

Japanese verbs have agglutinating properties: some of the conjugated forms are themselves conjugable verbs (or i-adjectives), which can result in several suffixes being strung together in a single verb form to express a combination of meanings.

A revision sheet visually summarizing the conjugations and uses described below

Conjugable words (verbs, i‑adjectives, and na‑adjectives) are traditionally considered to have six possible conjugational stems or bases (活用形, katsuyōkei; literally "conjugation forms"). This article lists those from the negative base (未然形, mizenkei), as well as the tentative base (推量形/意思形, suiryōkei/ishikei) that was split off during the post‑WWII spelling reforms.

Negative

Main article: Japanese negative form conjugation (mizenkei base)

The negative (否定形・打消形, hiteikei/uchikeishikei), apart from being plainly negative, can commonly express affirmation of the contrary but in an understated way, for example in rhetorical negative questions which imply affirmation, often for politeness, such as for softening hortatives.

Passive

Main article: Japanese passive form conjugation (mizenkei base)

The passive or passive potential turns the patient (or target) or victim of an action into a subject, which can be marked with the nominative particle ga.

Potential

Main article: Japanese potential form conjugation (mizenkei base)

Potentiality (可能, kanō) describes the possibility for an action to happen, whether it involves an intentional acting agent or not.

Causative

Main article: Japanese causative form conjugation (mizenkei base)

Causativity (使役, shieki) expresses how an instigator causes an agent to do something, whether by making or letting the agent (A) do it. The instigator (I) is marked with the nominative ga, while the agent is customarily marked with either ni or o depending on the original verb's transitivity.

Hortative

Main article: Japanese hortative form conjugation (mizenkei base)

The hortative or volitional expresses the speaker's or speakers' personal or collective volition ("I think I will do it", "we think we will do it"), or invitation to others ("let's do it"), to do something. The same form, otherwise known as the tentative, conjectural or presumptive, expresses subjective speculation ("I think/presume that's the case") or supposition ("perhaps that's the case", "that could be the case"). The tentative meanings are increasingly outdated as later generations of speakers favor using darō, deshō, or de gozaimashō as less ambiguous tentative markers.

See also

• Japanese godan and ichidan verbs
• Honorific speech in Japanese
• Japanese adjectives
• Japanese particles
• Japanese grammar

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External links

• Japanese Verb Conjugator, online tool giving all forms for any verb
• Japanese Verb Conjugator, online tool with romaji, kana, and kanji output
• Japanese Verb Conjugation Practice, online tool for verb conjugation practice
• JLearn.net, an online Japanese dictionary that accepts conjugated terms and returns the root verb
• Guide to conjugation te form of Japanese verbs
• List of Free Online Verb Dictionaries
• Handbook of Japanese Verbs – National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics