THE NATURE OF THE JAPANESE VERB, SO-CALLED. 



By benjamin SMITH LYMAN. 

 (Read April 12, 19 12.) 



In the first place, what is properly a verb? The term was first 

 applied to a clearly defined class of Greek and Latin words, and has 

 ever since been supposed to belong to words of essentially similar 

 character in those and other languages. As the old grammars un- 

 dertake to describe that character, a verb is a word that signifies to 

 be, to do, or to suft'er ; that is, broadly an action ; but is the definition 

 not so general that it might include even the words existence, action, 

 experience? Is a verb not more precisely and distinctively a term 

 that in a single word expresses not only being, doing, or suffering, 

 but at the same time indicates personality, time, mood and voice, 

 either all of them, or, at least, personality? Under personality, 

 may be included an indication not merely of the person strictly 

 speaking (whether first, second or third) of the subject, but its 

 number, and in some languages its gender. Even the so-called im- 

 personal verbs of Latin showed that their true subject was of the 

 third person, either some undefined being, as in tonuit, it thunders, 

 or a clause, as in placet, it pleases. It may be objected that many 

 parts of the English verb do not of themselves indicate personality 

 at all, as in : we work, you work, they work. But it can be an- 

 swered, even without urging that the word work is, in reality, not a 

 verb, that the general scheme of inflection in a language is not in- 

 validated by the fact that in some cases the same form recurs ; as, 

 for example, the nominative, accusative and vocative of Latin and 

 Greek neuter nouns. It is, however, preposterous to set up a scheme 

 of inflection where all the forms throughout all the words of the 

 whole language are the same. To the objection that may also be 

 raised that the infinitive and certain other parts of, for instance, the 

 Latin verb do not indicate the person of the subject, it might be 

 answered that those parts are not strictly verbs, any more than the 



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