Command-Like Moods

Since we don’t traditionally consider English to have more than three grammatical moods, namely the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive, it’s very possible that many do not know the many terms that come with studying classical Japanese and the wealth of grammatical moods it brings with it. For this time, I would like to bring clarification to a group of moods which are command-like in nature. They are the imperative, cohortatory, exhortatory, necessatative, desiderative, and optative moods.

• Imperative

The imperative is probably the most familiar of these moods. It expresses a simple, direct command. In English, it is the bare infinitive: go! do! be!   In Japanese, it is the meireikei: 行け！しろ！なれ！This mood in Japanese is called 命令法.

*だ and ある cannot occur in this mood and are supplanted by なる. いろ is uncommon. It should be noted that  classical Japanese employed the imperative for all verbs (the copula as well?) indiscriminately.

• Hortatory

The hortatory mood is a family of moods that urges. There are different types of hortatory depending on the degree of urging and the person of the verb. Japanese only has two hortatory moods:

1.   Cohortatory

The cohortatory always involves a verb in the second person plural. Since Japanese doesn’t distinguish person and number, only context will tell you if the verb involves both the speaker and listener. In English, we express this using the phrase “let’s/let us”: let’s go! let’s do! let’s be!  In Japanese, this is the ～よう/～おう/～ましょう form when it means “let’s” and not “shall I?”: 行こう！しよう！なろう！This mood in Japanese, I call 協勧誘法・きょうかんゆうほう.

*だ and ある cannot be expressed in this mood and are generally supplanted by なる. いよう is uncommon and is generally supplanted by いこう.

2.   Exhortatory

The exhortatory is a hortatory which urges only the listener to do something. In English, a number of modal verbs can be employed to express degrees of exhortation, including  “should,” “ought,” and “better”: you should go / he ought to do / they better be. In Japanese as well, many different forms can express these ideas: 方が良い ・  すべきだ  ・  はずだ .  I call this mood 勧誘法 in Japanese (in most sources it is referred to as “inducement 「勧誘」.”

*だ, ある, and いる cannot be expressed in this mood (except with はず).

• Necessitative

The necessitative mood simply and succinctly expresses the need for something to be done or not be done. In English, we use “must,” “have to,” “need to,” and sometimes “is to be”: I must not go /  he has to do / they need to / it is to not be.  Modern Japanese has no separate verb form to express this, so it’s expressed periphrastically with ～なければならない and its numerous equivalents: 行かなければならない ・  しなくてはいけない ・ ではないとだめだ.  I call this mood 必要法 in Japanese.

*ある cannot be expressed in this mood

• Desiderative

In the desiderative mood,  the speaker expresses the desire to act or have someone or something act in a certain manner. In English, it is all occurrences of the modal verb “want”: I want to go / he wants to do / I want it to be / I want her to. Modern Japanese expresses this using the auxiliaries ～たい, ～たがる, and ～てほしい:  行きたい ・ したがっている ・ なってほしい. I call this mood 希望法 in Japanese.

*だ and ある do not occur in this mood. いたい is uncommon.

• Optative

The optative mood expresses the wish or hope of the speaker for someone to act in a certain manner or for something to occur with a command-like semantic meaning. In English, it is expressed with “if only, “may,” and “let”: if only i could go / may he do right / let it be that.  In modern Japanese, it is expressed periphrastically with either a conditional mood (and optionally strengthened by さえ) with いい and optionally のに following, or with ように after the ～ます form: 行けばいい（のに）・ したらよかったのに ・ になりますように. I call this 願望法 in Japanese.

Explanation of Tense and Aspect

In order to accurately understand Japanese verbs, one must understand the linguistic concepts of tense and aspect.

In modern Japanese, verbs can only show what is known as “aspect.” However, classical Japanese verbs can show either tense or aspect depending on what ending is used. English, for comparison, can show tense and aspect only by proxy.

Tense is defined as  “a category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.”  It does nothing but denote the time at which an event occurs in reference to the here-and-now. It is useful to note that tense can only be shown by the conjugation of a verb. Therefore, English has two tenses -past and non-past- as the future compound tense must be shown using the auxiliary verbs “will” or “shall” and past is marked by conjugating a verb with “-ed.”

Aspect “expresses how an action, event, or state relates to the flow of time.” It does nothing but denotes qualities of the situation on a time line. It can be denoted with the conjugation of a verb OR in compound constructions with auxiliary verbs.

To clarify the difference between these two, let’s use English and Japanese examples:

1) I walked. (tense -shows that “walk” happened before the here-and-now)

2) I was walking. (fused tense/aspect -“was” shows that “walk” happened before the hear-and-now [tense] while “walking” shows that the action was continuous [aspect])

3) I have walked. (fused tense/aspect -“have” shows that result of “walk” continues into the here-and-now [aspect] while “walked” shows that the action happened before the here-and-now [tense])

4) I will have walked. (fused tense/aspect -“will” is a modal verb giving the future tense where “walk” cannot do so, while “have” and “walked” function similarly to the above)

5) 行った (aspect -shows that 行く was completed) (lit. [He] went.)

6) 行っている (aspect -shows that the result of 行く continues into the here-and-now) (lit. [He] imperfectly exists having gone.)

7)待つ (aspect -shows that 待つ has not yet been completed) (lit. [I] wait. (as in do or don’t), or [I]will wait.)

8) 待っている (aspect – shows that 待つ is ongoing and is not yet completed) (lit. [I] imperfectly exist having waited.)

9) 待っていた (aspect -shows that 待つ was ongoing and is completed) (lit. [I] perfectly exist having waited.)

As we understand #5-9 in English, they can be translated as “He went.”/ “He has gone.”/ “I wait.” or “I will wait.”/ “I am waiting.” or “I will be waiting.”/ “I was waiting.” or “I had been waiting.” respectively. It’s here we can see that Japanese has no actual tense. If it did, we would be able to distinguish between “I was waiting.” and “I had been waiting.” However, we can’t because there is no way to conjugate the verb to place in time before a present action (past) or a past action (past of the past / pluperfect). You can also see this in a sentence such as 「日本に来た時に、食べよう。」If 「た」was a past tense marker, then the sentence would make no sense (“When I came to Japan, let’s eat.”). However, 「た」is a perfective aspect marker so the actual translation is “When my coming to Japan is complete, let’s eat.” Therefore, we can rewrite that sentence as 「日本に来た後で、食べよう。」(“After I come to Japan, let’s eat.”). Lastly, if Japanese verbs had tenses, the translation possibilities (in terms of time reference, anyways) would generally be 1-to-1, but we most normally see 2-to-1 due to there being tense distinctions within a single aspect, ie. #9.

With this in mind, the finer points of classical Japanese become clearer and translations, whether in modern Japanese or English, become possible.

I’ve compiled  a comprehensive chart of all the classical Japanese verb conjugations in order to demonstrate the similarities and differences between them. Inflectional endings denoted with a “－” mark changes in vowel sound but not initial consonant sound (like か and く where verbs have various final consonant sounds).  Inflections denoted with a “Ø” mark stems that instead of shifting sounds, drop the final kana from the shuushikei (like 見る becoming 見）. Inflectional endings with no denotation mark that all verbs of that conjugation share a final consonant that varies in vowel sound (like ら and り  where all verbs end in -r*). I’ve also added the modern conjugations for comparisons sake.

Here is the chart:

To review the main characteristics of the conjugations, here is a summary list:

Yodan/Tetragrade conjugation -modern Godan/Pentagrade verbs, inflections share 4 common vowel shifts

Kami-ichidan/Upper Monograde conjugation -contains only 10 base verbs which are all modern Ichidan (-iru) verbs, forms share only an i-final mora which does not vary

Kami-Nidan/Upper Bigrade conjugation -contain the rest of almost all modern-day Ichidan (-iru) verbs, forms share two vowel-final sounds, -u and -i (center and one above center)

Shimo-Ichidan/Lower Monograde conjugation -contains only 蹴る・ける, forms only share an e-final mora which does not vary

Shimo-Nidan/ Lower Bigrade conjugation -contain almost all modern-day Ichidan (-eru) verbs, forms share two vowel-final sounds, -u and -e (center and one below center)

Ra-Column Irregular Conjugation -contains most of the verbs of being including derivative verb なり, only conjugation in which the shuushikei is not a -u mora

Na-Column Irregular Conjugation -contains only 死ぬ and 往ぬ

Sa-Column Irregular Conjugation -contains only す and its derivatives

Ka-Column Irregular Conjugation -contains only 来

Explanation of Auxiliary Verbs and Particles (Bound Forms)

This group of words are collectively called 付属語（ふぞくご）or bound forms. That is, these parts of speech cannot stand alone and must be paired with a noun or verb.

Auxiliary verbs （助動詞）（じょどうし）(sometimes called “inflecting suffixes”) in classical Japanese, are parts of speech that connect to the specific stems of verbs that change the verb’s tense, mood, or voice that inflect (have their own stem forms) that cannot stand alone as verbs. I denote these with a tilde ～.  Auxiliary verbs are often defective (lacking a full conjugation).

Ex) ～たり.

Verbal particles （ 助詞） （じょし）are parts of speech that have all of the characteristics of auxiliary verbs, but they do not inflect.

Ex)   彼が死なば我も死ぬ。If he dies, I too shall die.

Next are the case particles （格助詞）（かくじょし）; they also do not inflect, but instead of attaching to verbs, they follow nouns to denote the noun’s grammatical role in the sentence (genitive, locative, etc.).  *Case particles for the nominative case （が）and accusative case （を）are frequently omitted in classical Japanese.

Ex) 京へ往にたり。He left for the capital.

Closely related are the 係助詞 （かかりじょし）(binding particles). They are a special type of case particle that when used, change the verb stem from the one that would normally be used in a certain position. This phenomenon is called 係結び （かかりむすび）(bound form).

Ex) 我ぞ死ぬる。The one who will die is I.  *Notice that the rentaikei is used in sentence final position instead of the usual shuushikei.

Lastly, there are conjunctive particles （接続助詞）（せつぞくじょし）which also do not inflect, but follow a limited number of inflected forms (verbal or nominal) and do not change the meaning of the verb, but serve to connect clauses within the sentence.

Ex) 彼死ぬれども我死なず。He has died, but I shall not.

 

Explanation of Stems

Verbs in Japanese are conjugated from multiple stems. The “dictionary stem” by which modern verbs are listed today is one of them. Changes in the stem are visible only today in the Godan verb conjugation and with the irregular verbs する and 来る. Take the verb 思う.  There are five stems associated with it:  思わ、思い、思う、思え、思お.  They are, in today’s terminology, the irrealis stem, the continuative stem, the dictionary stem, the  imperative stem, and the volitional stem. Linguistically, these stem terms can not only have multiple names, but phonetically identical stems may also be distinguished by different stem names. For example, 思い may also be known as the “conjunctive stem” and 思え may be distinguished as actually being two separate stems, the “imperative stem” and the “hypothetical stem.”  Due to stems losing their inherent qualities over the years, these sorts of things are complicated. However, in Classical Japanese, the qualities of each stem were regular, as will be seen later, and as such, the linguistic terminologies of modern verbs are best put aside for now.

Classical Japanese has 6 stems. They are:

未然形 (みぜんけい) -irrealis stem: used for things that have not yet happened and things that are not

連用形 (れんようけい) -conjunctive stem: used to connect clauses and with tense-indicating inflecting endings

終止形 (しゅうしけい) – terminal stem: used to predicate sentences

連体形 (れんたいけい) -attributive stem: used to modify nouns and for substantives

已然形 (いぜんけい) -realis stem: used for things that have happened

命令形 (めいれいけい) -imperative stem: used for commands

On these stems, different endings are attached to create other Japanese moods, voices, and tenses.