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i-adjectives end with い (i) (but never えい, ei) in base form.They may predicate sentences and inflect for past, negative, etc. As they head verb phrases, they can be considered a type of verbal (verb-like part of speech) and inflect in an identical manner as the negative form of verbs.
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.
Japanese adjectives, specifically i-adjectives, function grammatically as verbs, though with more limited conjugation. There are a few irregularities of note. There are a few irregularities of note. Most significantly, 良い yoi "good" is generally replaced by ii in the base form ( yoi is found in formal usage), though only yoi is used in ...
Japanese adjectives are unusual in being closed class but quite numerous – about 700 adjectives – while most languages with closed class adjectives have very few. [7] [8] Some believe this is due to a grammatical change of inflection from an aspect system to a tense system, with adjectives predating the change.
A few nari adjectival nouns followed a similar path to tari adjectival nouns, becoming naru adjectives in Modern Japanese (analogous to taru adjectives), rather than na adjectives as most nari adjectival nouns did. These include 単なる tannaru "mere, simple" or 聖なる seinaru "holy" and are generally classed as rentaishi.
If the corresponding affirmative predicate is based on a verbal form, a negative auxiliary is used. This is not convertible for affirmative verbs with nominal forms. The negative auxiliary is used in present tense, future tense, 1st past tense of indicative, and in the imperative and optative mood.
In the past tense, however, or in the present tense negative, the verbs kāna and laysa are used, which take the accusative case: كان محمد مهندسًا (Kāna Muḥammad muhandisan), "Muhammad was an engineer' (kāna = "(he) was") (literally "be it Muhammad an-engineer")
In the case of the past-tense and te forms of conjugation, the 'invariant' stem changes such that the consonant is removed from all godan verbs (except verbs ending in "つ" (tsu) or "す" (su)). This means the defining characteristic of consonant stem verbs cannot be used to define consonant stem verbs for the past-tense or te forms. The true ...