Basic Syntax Of Japanese Language

This article describes a few syntactical features of Japanese language that differ considerably from Indo-European languages like English or Spanish. Naturally, one article can not cover the same ground as a whole language course, but it does introduce concepts that will expand the readers understanding of Japanese and perhaps assist him or her with more detailed language study.

What is Syntax?

Syntax is our understanding about how words and phrases are collected into sentences in natural languages to convey thoughts. Students of syntax have identified rules (which they usually lump together with grammatical rules) to define how a language should be spoken. Most users of syntax in the real world, however, do not know that they are using it. It just happens.

Interesting Features of Japanese Sentence Structure

Word Order. Head Final is a phrase linguists use to describe a language that puts the most important word of a phrase (the head) at the end. Head Initial describes the reverse. The old man is a head final phrase. The important word man comes at the end. In Spanish, for example, it would be el hombre viejo, which is a head initial phrase. Most languages are predominantly one way, but have instances of the other. For example, Attorney Genera is head initial, where as general practice is head-final. English is mainly head-final.

Of the principal languages of the earth, Japanese is probably the most strongly head-final of all. The verb of a sentence is (with trivial exceptions) always considered the most important word in the sentence, so it always goes last. So The player ran around the bases would come out bases-around player ran. The head is not necessarily the biggest word in the phrase, or noun. What we call prepositions can be heads, too, as in this baseball player example. In a sense, player is the head for around the bases (bases-around) and ran is the head for player. All of this requires a change in hierarchical thinking. Even the word preposition needs to be changed, as it no longer precedes its object, and should be called a postposition instead.

Sentence Structure. Like many Indo-European languages, Japanese sentence structure is classed as SOV subject, object, verb. In fact, subjects and objects can shift around a great deal, as their functions are identified by grammatical particles. This prevents confusion. The verb, however is always at the end. Linguists call Japanese sentence structure topic-comment. This means that the first position in the sentence is for the topic (whether it be object, subject or something else), and the phrases following it represent a comment much like computer languages that use a command-word followed by parameters. As in the example above, Did you eat lunch? comes out lunch ate? Lunch is the topic (in this case, the object of the sentence), and ate is the comment. The subject (you) is understood. To say This is Mr. Nakano, the sentence structure would be (1) This (Kochira as topic, with wa to identify it, then two phrases as comment: (2) Mr. Nakano (Nakano-san) and (3) is (desu). Note the verb in last position: kochira-wa nakano-san desu. The topic need not be the subject of the sentence. A sentence like Sharks teeth are sharp would use Shark as the topic, with wa even though it is here used as the object of a propositional (genitive) phrase. The sentence structure would be something like Sharks sharp teeth have.

Word Functions. Expand your thinking past the parts of speech that you learned in school for English, or Latin or another Western tongue. Japanese also has nouns, verbs and adjectives, too, but theres more. Two subcategories of nouns are verbal nouns and adjectival nouns. A verbal noun is the name of a person, place or thing (just like a normal noun), which includes an action or state of being as well -- like the being-healthy-woman. In English the example of Dead Man Walking comes close. In the same vein, an adjectival noun is a noun phrase that conveys syntactically not only the noun, but one or more identifying (modifying) characteristics of it as well. They can be combined, as in the-over-rough-terrain-going-car.

Pronouns present many large differences between Japanese and Indo-European tongues. Here are just two illustrations. In English, pronouns can not have adjectives. We cant say the sad he walked home slowly. In Japanese it is extremely common. This is because Japanese pronouns evolved from real nouns. Another example is interactions between groups. In English these are handled by prepositional phrases and pronouns. I and We are first person. If you and I are talking about them, then they are third person that is, they are not part of our group. Japanese uses the concept of our group (inside) versus their group (outside). Verb inflections indicate whether the action goes inside-to-outside (we to them) or the reverse (them-to-us). These are usually translated as directional indications, where up is from the inside group to the outsiders, and down is from the outsiders to the insiders. For example, explain-up would indicate that we explained it to them. In short, common prepositional phrases using pronouns in English are handled by directional indicators in verb inflections in Japanese.

Changes in the Language. English adopts new verbs easily, like to instant-message someone. Japanese does not change in its verbs or adjectives. These parts of speech (or classes) are closed. Instead, a new verbal-noun might be created, and connected with the verb do (suru) to describe the activity, as in do text-messaging instead of inventing the verb to text-message. The other place where the language accepts new words is in adjectival nouns (also called nominal adjectives). In English, a close approximation would be laptop.) Thus syntax in Japanese is highly rule-oriented and internally consistent with nouns and verbs, the closed classes for purposes of taking on new vocabulary. But in the two subclasses of verbal nouns and adjectival nouns, many, many different variations in usage exist, representing exceptions almost as often as the rules.

Topic Prominence is a language characteristic that gives syntactical importance to the subject matter of the declaration (or question). This serves to replace a bit of functionality lost in Japanese because it has no articles. To distinguish something that we are not talking about (though we might decide to talk about it) from something that, yes, we are discussing, Japanese inserts one of two particles. Particles are small, unchanging words that serve a purely grammatical or syntactical function. Wa is used before a noun that we are making or have made our topic. It is a bit like the or this, but vaguer. Ga is the particle before any old instance of the noun, which is not the current topic of conversation.

Omission of Subject. In proper English, the only time the subject is omitted (and understood) is in commands. For example, Run! is considered to be a complete sentence. Otherwise, if you do not see a subject, it is not a sentence. In Japanese, the omission of words especially nouns is frequent and normal. Once a topic has been identified (with the wa particle), it need not be repeated unless ambiguity would result. Did you eat lunch? might be expressed lunch ate? assuming the parties to the conversation are on the same wave length. Verb endings have status inflections, which can further clarify to whom or about whom the speaker is talking. You can even have a complete sentence made up of just an adjective, like Delighted! (meaning I (or you, or whoever is the topic) is or am delighted!)

What is a Word? Because Japanese so easily agglutinates several word-elements or particles into one string of characters to express one idea (including these strange items called verbal nouns and adjectival nouns), it is fair to say there are no words in Japanese as westerners understand the term. They are more concatenations of syllables that result as phrases. Normally Japanese is not written with spaces between characters, as context makes it clear where each phrase starts and ends. Romanized Japanese does use word-spacing for the sake of clarity, but the blocks set off by spaces are really phrases comprised of grammatical particles and prefixes, substantive vocabulary (a word with meaning) and suffixes and inflective endings. Vocal pitch follows the same pattern, which helps convey meaning to the listener. That is, in a question such as have you eaten lunch? there will be two falls of tone. The first is the lunch phrase (with an object particle added at the back), and the second is the ate phrase (with a question particle added at the back).

In subsequent articles we will provide introductions to grammatical concepts in Japanese.