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



any other noun) as an adjective before another substantive; and, 

 knowing the real meaning of the verbal noun, you do not habitually 

 attribute to it the distinctly different significance of a true verb, to 

 the greater or less bewilderment of the Japanese hearer. 



The varied forms of the verbal noun to which the names of voice, 

 mood, and tense have been given are compounds, especially with the 

 so-called substantive verb, more or less closely welded into single 

 words. The passive voice is formed by compounding the verbal 

 noun with another verbal noun, of which the root is c, meaning 

 getting, or receiving; as, striking-getting, or striking-being-getting, 

 or striking-receiving, being struck, or to be struck. The passive is 

 sometimes used in a potential sense, and is so called ; as, for example, 

 it is {to be) heard. Other compounds form what have been called 

 the indicative, imperative, conditional, conjunctive, concessive, causa- 

 tive and desiderative. In like manner, yet other compounds have 

 been called tenses, present, past and future. The so-called future, 

 with the termination 00, or o]t, or an, en or in (so written, but really 

 nasal vowels), derived from aniu of the older language, is some- 

 times more correctly called the dubitative, but is much used as we 

 use the future, something doubtful, or probable, being applied more 

 particularly to future things ; but often, as our so-called future with 

 us, of present things ; as, " it will be so," in the case of some prob- 

 able explanation of a fact. The derivation of the termination from 

 amu seems really to show that we have here a clear case of what 

 some learned philologists would consider a shocking impossibility, a 

 derivation pointing back even to the language, or utterances, or 

 noises, of brute animals; though it can hardly be seriously denied 

 that human speech must have been originally derived from the 

 utterances of brutes, nor that it is wholly possible, and not a quite 

 absurdly extravagant supposition, that here and there some traces, 

 or relics, of that remote age may yet be found. The aniu seems, 

 in fact, to be originally the h'm of doubt, a nasal with the mouth 

 closed, which is still used by lower animals in modern times, as a 

 part of what may be called their language, the smelling of an un- 

 known object. But a nasal made with the mouth open, commonly 

 softened to an n, is essentially a mark of rejection (as regards the 

 mouth, ejection, or a snort in the lower animals) ; that is, of denial. 



