Japanese negative form conjugation (mizenkei base)

This section is an excerpt from Japanese conjugation (mizenkei base).[edit]

Japanese conjugation, like the conjugation of verbs of many other languages, allows verbs to be morphologically modified to change their meaning or grammatical function. In Japanese, the beginning of a word (the stem) is preserved during conjugation, while the ending of the word is altered in some way to change the meaning (this is the inflectional suffix). Japanese verb conjugations are independent of person, number and gender (they do not depend on whether the subject is I, you, he, she, we, etc.); the conjugated forms can express meanings such as negation, present and past tense, volition, passive voice, causation, imperative and conditional mood, and ability. There are also special forms for conjunction with other verbs, and for combination with particles for additional meanings.

Japanese verbs have agglutinating properties: some of the conjugated forms are themselves conjugable verbs (or i-adjectives), which can result in several suffixes being strung together in a single verb form to express a combination of meanings.

Conjugable words (verbs, i‑adjectives, and na‑adjectives) are traditionally considered to have six possible conjugational stems or bases (活用形, katsuyōkei; literally "conjugation forms"). This article lists those from the negative base (未然形, mizenkei), as well as the tentative base (推量形/意思形, suiryōkei/ishikei) that was split off during the post‑WWII spelling reforms.

The negative (否定形・打消形, hiteikei/uchikeishikei), apart from being plainly negative, can commonly express affirmation of the contrary but in an understated way, for example in rhetorical negative questions which imply affirmation, often for politeness, such as for softening hortatives.

Negative form example sentences

Negative: Conjugation table

The negative form is created by using the mizenkei base, followed by the ‑nai (ない) suffix. This auxiliary arose in eastern dialects during Late Middle Japanese and displaced the western ‑n (see below) in standard Japanese, and while having been linked to another negative auxiliary, ‑nau → ‑nō (なふ), it appears to be a grammaticalized version of the adjective nai (無い; 'be nonexistent'). In masculine (or rural eastern) speech, ‑nai is smoothed out into ‑nē (see Japanese conjugation (imperfective form) § Conjugation table for more comparative examples).

‑N (karan (狩らん; 'not hunt')) is a negative auxiliary that was reduced from the earlier western and classical ‑nu (karanu (狩らぬ)), but was largely displaced by the eastern ‑nai (karanai (狩らない)) in standard Japanese. ‑N(u) is still found in modern Japanese and thought of as "shortened" from ‑nai, although as the fact that shin(u) (しん・しぬ) is strictly dialectal compared to the standard sen(u) (せん・せぬ) shows, it is not really a "short" form. Some modern examples include tokoro ga, henji o yokosan no desu (ところが、返事を寄越さんのです; 'but they sent me no reply'), Boku wa benkai sen desu. Tada iwan koto o kakaretara komaru. (僕は弁解せんです。ただ言わん事を書かれたら困る; 'I don't make excuses. It's just that it is embarrassing to have things written as if I had said them when I haven't.'), sen de kudasai (せんでください; 'don't do it'). ‑N(u)'s infinitive form, ‑zu, is still used in writing. Ja nai (no) ka (じゃない(の)か; 'isn't it?') is indeed shortened to jan (じゃん) especially by young people. ‑Nai and ‑nu can be used in the same sentence where ‑nai is treated as conclusive and ‑nu as attributive: Gaikōken o motanu Okinawa wa Amerika to kōshō suru koto mo dekinai (外交権を持たぬ沖縄はアメリカと交渉することもできない; 'Okinawa, which does not have diplomatic power, cannot negotiate with America').

The regular negative of aru would be aranai, but it is very rarely used, for example in Honma ni uso de wa aranai to yū no ja na (本間に嘘ではあらないというのじゃな), Tosa to te oni no kuni de mo hebi no kuni de mo aranai mono o (土佐とて鬼の国でも蛇の国でもあらないものを), etc. In Murakami Haruki's 2017 novel Killing Commendatore, the character "Commendatore", who is characterized as having "an odd way of speaking" that is "not the way ordinary people would speak", often, but not always, uses aranai in place of nai. The western aranu usually functions as an attributive word that idiomatically means "unexpected" or "untoward", as in aranu koto o kuchibashiru (あらぬことを口走る; 'blurt something out out of left field'); it can still have a literal meaning and be used predicatively just like nai, but for literary or faux‑archaic effect, as in the Parmenidian phrase aru mono wa ari, aranu mono wa aranu (あるものはあり、あらぬものはあらぬ; transl. that which is, is, that which is not, is not). Arazu usually occurs in the literary negative copular phrase ni arazu (にあらず), as in taben wa yūben ni arazu (多弁は雄弁にあらず; transl. a wealth of word is not eloquence).

For the negatives of suru and its compounds, the general practice is to pair the eastern shi‑ with the eastern ‑nai, and the western se‑ with the western ‑n(u) and ‑zu for mainstream Japanese (only the eastern shinai is standard). Any of such combinations as sanai, sunai, shin(u), etc are considered dialectal. The writer Mori Ōgai, hailing from the western prefecture of Shimane, reportedly rigorously used senai, apparently in accordance with the classical (western) se‑, despite the dominance of sen in the west. For "irregular" verbs such as aisuru (愛する) and tassuru (達する), which are irregular even compared to suru, see Japanese conjugation § The bases of suru for more.

The current negative of ‑masu is ‑masen. The unique shapes of ‑masen (rather than ‑mashinai) and the hortative ‑mashō (rather than *‑mashiyō) suggest their provenance in western polite speech. Compare westernized hyper‑polite adjectival expressions with gozaimasu. The easternized ‑mashinai was first recorded in its spoken form with vowel fusion as ‑mashinē in Edo Japanese. It has been attested in dialog from modern literature, for example in the speech of underclass, poor, peasant, servile or rural characters, even non‑Japanese ones, notably the eye dialect of black slaves from the novel Gone with the Wind. The practice of using the stigmatized "unsophisticated" Tōhoku Japanese, in which ‑mashinai and ‑mashinē figure, to translate the stereotypical speech of black Southern Americans, has become unpopular. The use of a low‑class pseudo‑dialect has been claimed to contribute to the churlish stereotype of Tōhoku Japanese, although it has also been argued that such use is increasingly perceived as mere fictional rural speech without necessarily any association with real‑life dialects.

The negatives of kuru (来る) are regularly konai/konē/kon(u), with kinai/kinē being dialectal Kantō alternatives.

‑N also happens to be a reduced form of ‑mu (karamu (狩らむ; 'let's hunt; probably hunt')), whose other reduced form, ‑u, is still used to make hortative forms (karō (狩ろう)). ‑Nu also happens to be an archaic perfective auxiliary, with a different conjugation from the negative ‑nu; it is equivalent to ‑ta/‑da in modern Japanese, and it is sometimes used elevatedly, as in Kaze to Tomo ni Sarinu (=Satta) (風と共に去りぬ; 'Gone with the Wind').

The godan and ichidan‑based negative endings ‑ranai, ‑rinai or ‑renai, specifically with the consonant r, can be reduced to ‑nnai and even ‑nnē in speech, as in wakaranai → wakannai (分かんない), naranai → nannē (なんねえ), kurenai → kunnai (呉んない).

The expressions sumanai/suman/sumimasen (すまない・すまん・すみません; 'I'm sorry', lit. 'it isn't over') comes from a special use of the subsidiary verb sumu (済む; 'be over') (see Gerund: Grammatical compatibility for examples).

The godan verb shiru (知る), whose kanji represents the Chinese word for "know", is often translated as "know", but a more accurate translation would be "learn", "find out", or "get to know". In order to say "I know", the construction shitte( i)ru (知って(い)る) is used instead (see Gerund: Grammatical compatibility for the usage of ‑te iru). This is because shiru is imbued with active recognition, which relates to the archaic meaning of taking physical command or possession of somebody or something, reflected by the spellings 治る with the kanji for the Chinese word for "rule", "govern" or "control", and 領る for "lead". To "know", therefore, is to take psychological command or possession of outside information, hence shiru ("I take command of this information"), and maintain it, hence shitte iru ("I took command of this information and it's still in my knowledge"). While "I know" ("I take command of it and still have it") is shitte iru, "I don't know" is actually shiranai (知らない; "I don't take command of it"), which is morphologically the negative of shiru, but semantically the negative of both shitte iru and shiru.

On the other hand, shitte inai (知っていない; "I didn't take command of it and still don't have it") implies perpetuation of ignorance, for example in Ningen ga naze hito o korosu no ka […] sono konponteki na riyū ni tsuite, watashitachi wa mada nani mo shitte inai, to omowareru kara de aru (人間がなぜ人を殺すか[…]その根本的な理由について、私たちはまだ何も知っていない、と思われるからである; transl. Why does a human being kill another person? […] it seems that we still remain ignorant of the basic reasons for that). There have been analyses on precise cases where shitte inai is interchangeable with or even preferable to shiranai, for example when paired with shitte iru in the same clause, as in Doitsu-go o shitte ite mo shiranakute mo / shitte inakute mo saiyō shiken ni wa kankei nai. (ドイツ語を知っていても知らなくても・知っていなくても採用試験には関係ない。; transl. Whether you know German or not has nothing to do with the employment test.); or in cases involving the perfect aspect, only shitte inai, not shiranai, can be used, as in Shinbun o yomu made ni, Tarō wa jiken no shinsō o shitte inai. (新聞を読むまでに、太郎は事件の真相を知っていない。; transl. By the time he reads the newspaper, Tarō won't have learnt of the incident.), Tarō wa ima made ichido mo jibun no genkai o shitte inai. (太郎は今まで一度も自分の限界を知っていない。; transl. Tarō hasn't learnt of his own limitations, even once until now.) Nevertheless, the question remains as to why shiranai is uniquely more common than shitte inai as the negative of shitte iru to begin with, a phenomenon not yet observable in other verbs. A recorded conversation with a young child shows that shiranai is not inherently intuitive in and of itself: when his father asked him a question with papa […] shiranai ("I don't know […]"), he mirrored his prompt with shiranai ("I don't know"); yet, when his father asked him with shitte 'ru deshō ("you know, don't you?"), he erroneously responded with *shitte 'ru nai ("I don't know", or more "accurately", shitte 'nai, though the expected response was still shiranai). In western dialects, there are shitte oru → shittoru (知っておる→知っとる; ≈ shitte iru → shitte 'ru), shitte oran → shittoran (知っておらん→知っとらん; ≈ shitte inai → shitte 'nai), shitte oranu → shittoranu (知っておらぬ→知っとらぬ), and shiran (知らん; ≈ shiranai).

Unlike verbs, adjectives do not have mizenkei, and instead their negatives are formed with their infinitives followed by the negative adjective nai, which is used to expand adjectives' negative conjugation similarly to how its opposite, the verb aru, is used to expand their affirmative conjugation. Since nai is of itself an adjective, it is possible to have a double negative, as in shizuka ja naku nai n da ga (静かじゃなくないんだが; transl. it's not not (=it is) quiet all right, but), hanashitaku naku nai kedo (話したくなくないけど; transl. I don't not want (=I do want) to talk, but), ippan no dokusha ni totte tashō wakarinikui ten mo naku wa nai (一般の読者に取って多少分かりにくい点もなくはない; transl. there are not not (=there are) points that, for the general reader, are hard to understand), etc.

The western negative auxiliaries ‑n(u) and ‑zu cannot attach directly to adjectival infinitives, and thus require the help of aru (which does have a mizenkei, ara‑), hence ‑karan(u) (← ‑ku aran(u)), ‑karazu (← ‑ku arazu), ‑karazaru (← ‑ku arazaru), etc. These are primarily used in writing, seldom in speech.

The word keshikaran(u) (怪しからん・怪しからぬ; 'insolent') is the negative of the archaic adjective keshi (怪し; 'unusual'; the modern form would be *keshii). Usually this western negative is used, but the easternized keshikaranai → keshikaranē (怪しからない; rather than *keshiku nai/nē) has also been reported as an Edo expression.

Negative: Grammatical compatibility

The eastern negative ‑nai generally works like an adjective, although its gerund ‑nai de is more common than the adjectival ‑nakute. The western gerund is ‑n(u) de.

The imperfect negative can be followed by the noun uchi (内; 'interval; within'), whereby it means "while it hasn't happened" or "before it happens." Contradictorily, when it is followed by the nouns mae (前; 'front; before') and saki (先; 'tip; first'), it can also mean the same thing, even though the literal meaning would suggest "before it doesn't happen." Thus, konai uchi (来ないうち; 'before one comes') would mean the same as konai mae/saki (来ない前・先), and roughly as the affirmative kuru mae (来る前) which, however, may be used when the speaker has positive conviction that one will in fact come.

The classical, and thus more literary than colloquial, ‑zu is originally the infinitive of ‑n(u), but it is often used conclusively with a copula. It is often optionally followed by the copular infinitive particle ni as in ‑zu ni which works like a sort of adverbial gerund that means "without doing." It is possible to distinguish between coordination in Tabezu de neta (食べずで寝た; 'I did not eat, I slept') and subordination in Tabezu ni neta (食べずに寝た; 'I slept without eating (= while hungry)').

See also

• Japanese passive form
• Japanese potential form
• Japanese causative form
• Japanese hortative form

References