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[thereby] protect our native land." Chin yōjaku wo motte midari ni taitō wo tsugi......, "Succeeding, young and feeble as We are, to the great inheritance of Our Ancestors." Hanahada motte, very"; Ima motte, "now," "down to the present." Wo motte suru, properly means "to use," but it can often be dropped in translating: Waga hai no miru tokoro wo motte suru ni, "Looking at it from our point of view" (lit. "Using the seeing place of our company”). Wo motte nari means "it is because of." Wo shite, with a causative verb, serves to denote the person who is caused to perform the action. Thus: Chin wo shite kimi-taru michi wo ushinawashimuru nomi narazu, shitagatte resso no tenka wo ushinawashimuru nari, "This is not only to make Us untrue to Our duty as Sovereign, but to make Us lose the Empire handed down by Our ancestors." Occasionally the noun corresponding to the English nominative is marked by the addition of wo shite: Moshi kairiku un-yu no arisama wo shite, kaku no gotoku fukanzen naru koto nakumba, "If the state of communications by sea and land were not so imperfect as they are."

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wo ya, a strong exclamation, nearly answering to the English colloquial "why!" (not "why?"): Shintei wa Burisson shi imada Naikaku wo soshiki sezaru mae ni oite sude ni wagi wo hatsugen shi, Futsutei kore ni ōjite kōwa no yoyaku wo kettei shitaru wo ya! Why! the Chinese government had already made overtures of peace, and the French government had signed a preliminary treaty of friendship before Monsieur Brisson formed his cabinet!' (Do not confound this wo ya with the more usual ni oite...... .wo ya).

Note also the following compound postpositions:

ya mo, "whether.........may (might) not".........ni itaru ya mo shiru-bekarazu, "We cannot tell whether it may not result in........."

ya wo; in this combination ya has its original interrogative

sense, and to serves to show that the whole clause preceding it is the object of the following verb: Nani ga yue ni furuwazarishi ya wo jinkyū suru ni, lit. "On investigating [this thing because of what did it not exercise influence?" i.e. "On enquiring into the reasons of its want of success."

N.B. The general rule, according to which postpositions must be preceded by the attributive form of the verb or adjective, admits of a few exceptions in special locutions, besides those noticed above under ka, ni, to, etc. Thus ari no mama (for aru mama), “just as it is," ("tel quel "); nashi ni (for naki ni), "without; and such idioms as furi mo sede or furi wa sede, "not raining;" kuwashiku wa zonzezu, "[I] know not exactly," where the indefinite form precedes mo and wa.

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INFLECTED WORDS.

CHAPTER VII.

THE AJDECTIVE.

SEC. 1.

PRIMARY ADJECTIVE FORMS.

The inflections of Japanese adjectives do not, like the inflections of English adjectives, serve to distinguish the degrees of comparison. Neither do they, as in French, indicate number or gender. As has been stated in the chapter on nouns, number and gender are considerations to which the Japanese grammatical system pays little or no heed. The object of the inflections of Japanese adjectives (and verbs) is primarily to show whether the force of the adjective (or verb) is attributive or predicative, indefinite or conclusive; and secondly to mark distinctions of tense and mood. All adjectives contain the verb "to be" implicitly. Thus :— Umi fukashi, “the sea [is] deep."

In its simple state, a Japanese adjective has four forms, viz.:

I. The Stem which is used only in compounds and occasionally in exclamations, as kata-gi, "hard-wood;" hosonagaki, "narrow-long," i.e. slender; yo-suguru, "to be too good."

II. The Indefinite or Adverbial Form, which is obtained by adding ku to the stem. It is used in two distinct manners, viz. 1. To qualify a verb as: Hayaku kuru, "To come quickly.”

In this case it corresponds to the English adverb in ly. But the Japanese use this form even before such verbs as "to be," and "to become," where English idiom requires the corresponding adjective. Thus :-Betsu no kuni wo miru ga gotoku naru-beshi. "It must be like finding oneself in another country." 2. As itself a predicative verb in every clause of a sentence except the last. Thus :-Yama takaku, kikō samuku, jinka sukunashi, "The mountains [of a certain country] are high, its climate is cold, and human dwellings few." In such cases each Japanese adjective in ku must be rendered by the corresponding English adjective preceded by some tense of the verb 66 "to be." The essential characteristic of the indefinite form is that it is of no tense or mood. In order to know by what tense or mood to translate it into English, it is necessary to ascertain the tense or mood of the adjective or verb nearest after it which is not also in the same indefinite form. Sometimes this will be the last adjective or verb of the whole sentence, sometimes only the adjective or verb of the last of a set of similar clauses. Thus in the above example, takaku and samuku must be translated by the English present indicative, because the final adjective sukunashi makes a general assertion, and may therefore be considered to be in the present tense. Again, take the example:-Toshi wakaku, karada mo sukoyaka nareba, yō ni teki su-beshi, “Being young and robust, he will do for the work." Here the intervention of the verb nareba in the conditional mood at the end of the succeeding clause shows that wakaku also must be construed as a conditional (=wakakereba). The construction is often a little more complicated. Thus :-Fune aredomo hito naku, hito aru mo kikai nashi, "We have ships, but no men; and even if we had the men, we have no machinery." Here the rhythm of the sentence shows that we must go to the end of

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the clause hito aru mo kikai nashi to find the adjective (verb) corresponding to naku. The aru of the second clause has to be passed over.

III. The Conclusive Form, which is obtained by adding shi to the stem. It is used only as a predicatve at the end of a sentence, as in the case of sukunashi in the first example given in the preceding paragraph, or as in the following example: Omou ni chūkō hi asaku, naiji no koto masa ni shinsaku kōchō su-beki mono sukunashi to sezu, "On reflection it is seen that the interval since the restoration is short, and that not a little remains to be originated or reorganized in the internal administration." (In this example all three inflections of the adjective are seen,-asaku, beki, sukunashi. Note too that sukunashi is at the end of a sentence grammatically speaking, the words to sezu, lit.“ do not consider that," being another short sentence serving to introduce the first after the manner of a quotation.)

N.B.-Those adjectives whose stem ends in shi or ji do not add another shi to form the conclusive, the one shi being held to suffice. Thus :-mezurushiku, conclusive mezurashi, "strange"; aru-majiku, conclusive aru-maji, "should not be." This exception is sometimes disregarded by ignorant writers; and such ungrammatical forms as ashishi (for ashi), "bad," are therefore occasionally met with.

IV. The Attributive Form, which is obtained by adding ki to the stem. It is used in three distinct manners, viz. 1. To qualify a noun, as Yoroshiki hō, “A good method"; Aru-majiki koto, "A thing that ought not to be" (lit. "an ought-not-to-be thing.") 2. When the adjective is followed by a postposition, thus: Hō no yoroshiki ni yori (colloq. shikata ga yoroshii kara), "Owing to the excellence of the method." San-itsu naki

For exceptions see chapter VI,

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