Talk:Japanese language

Japanese adjectives

About Japanese "adjectives", I wonder if there is another way to call them in English. In the university I study and in the grammar book I use (Grammaire Japonaise systématique, Shimamori Reiko, 1997 edition Jean Maisonneuve, yes it's French...), the word "adjective" is not used because it means this word needs another word to be used ( "ad" ) which is not the case in Japanese. So they call it "prédicat qualificatif" or "mot de qualité". Is there any translation of this concept in English or is it only used in France ? Stéphane C.B. Direz 18:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I think English usage is confined to 'adjective', certainly in popular usage. In linguistics, we use the concept of 'modification' to discuss the relationship between words or other units of language, e.g. 'blue' modifies 'car' in 'blue car', but this is a very general term. 'Predicate' is usually used to mean a larger phase including everything other than the subject within a sentence, e.g. Mary went to France. It is also used to describe adjectives which are linked to the noun via a verb: the car is blue (predicative) versus blue car (attributive). I think it is easier in English to call Japanese adjectives 'adjectives', even though the i-adjectives behave very much like verbs (we find this in English too: in the car is stolen, stolen functions like an adjective in a predicative sense, though it does not satisfy some other criteria for being an adjective). John Stephenson 02:06, 26 July 2009 (UTC)