y2 LYMAN— NATURE OF THE JAPANESE VERB. [April 12, 



word action is, and that they have only been classed under verbs 

 because they are in mode of formation closely connected with them, 

 and have at least some semblance of voice, mood, tense, and govern 

 any direct or indirect object in the same case as the other verbal 

 forms. It may, however, be admitted that for these reasons, espe- 

 cially the last, certain forms without the distinction of person may 

 be classed with verbs that have it ; but it may well be considered 

 extravagant to set up a class of verbs which do not have in any form 

 whatever any indication of person. 



The so-called Japanese verb is, clearly, not only lacking through- 

 out every form in the essential feature of person (including num- 

 ber and gender), but it completely lacks also any true indication of 

 time, mood, or voice; only in voice is there an approach to such an 

 indication, which, nevertheless, is very readily explained without 

 recourse to the device of calling the words verbs, and is no more 

 marked an indication than is found in the very words existence, 

 action, experience, which no one pretends to call verbs. Indeed, one 

 of the absurdities of our foreign grammars of Japanese has been that 

 the same particle that was called an indication of the object (the ac- 

 cusative) of a verb in the active voice, was necessarily called the sign 

 of the subject of the same verb in the passive voice. If it be ob- 

 jected that, according to these principles, there would be strictly 

 speaking no passive voice in English, the fact may readily be ad- 

 mitted ; for the English passive seems really to be wholly a factitious 

 one, the nearest translation we can give of the Latin. 



The Japanese verb, then, is a word that indicates neither person, 

 gender, number, time, mood nor voice; has, therefore, not a single 

 distinguishing characteristic of the verbs of other languages. It is 

 plainly nothing but a verbal noun (like working, striking, loving), 

 with which it agrees in every respect, not only in the presence of the 

 features which it has, but in the absence of those which it has not. 

 Just like other nouns, it has, at times, postpositions joined to it, and 

 is joined to other nouns as an adjective, just as nouns are used as 

 adjectives in English. 



This real character of the Japanese verb did not clearly appear 

 to me, at field-work in Japan, in 1873. until after six or eight months 

 of greenly groping, misled by the common grammars; but, then, the 



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