Re: Many thanks and one more question about HANJI+E

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
Bart Mathias wrote:

Taking note of the fact that "hanji" is attached to a noun
to form a new noun, one might say that "hanjiru":"hanji":
:"to judge/I (will) judge":"judgment/judging."


I quibbled:

Doesn't that boil down to saying that "hanjiru" is to "hanji"
as "to judge" is to "judging" (as a gerund, i.e., "judgement",
"the act of judging")?



Bart rejoined:

Perhaps, but I'm uneasy with it. That seems awfully close to
saying that "hanjiru" is to "hanji" as an infinitive is to a
gerund, and that is clearly skewed.


Yes, there's a lot wrong with the analogy. "Hanji" is more like a root form, while the gerund has a suffix ("-ing"), "hanjiru" has a lot more uses than just as an infinitive, etc.

Still, as a rough comparison for someone who doesn't know much about Japanese, it's probably the closest one can get without being incredibly technical.

<Blush> OK, I'll buy that.

By the way, I'm no expert on the history of the Japanese language, but the fact that the noun-like form "hanji" is closer to being a root form, while the plain verb form "hanjiru" has more of a suffix seems to be one more indication that Japanese is a very noun-based language, with verbs growing up, as it were, on the backs of nouns.

Of course, that wouldn't apply in all cases; the 行き (i-ki) of 行き過ぎ る (ikisugiru) and the plain verb form 行く (i-ku) both have just one syllable "stuck on" to the root, as do other verbs of the same class. Even so, I feel that the "-i" ending ("hanji", "iki") is somehow more basic than the plain verb form ("hanjiru", "iku"), just as "go" is more basic than "going". Am I right about this?

You're sort of looking at Japanese through the eyes of a kana reader,
and coming out with 国文法 instead of a linguistic analysis.

In "real life," both 行き and 行く have one vowel (-i and -u
respectively) attached to the root, which itself is not even a
pronounceable word. The -i is the same one as in 判じ (haN-z-i), but
the one in 判じる (haN-z-iru) is a result of a regularizing sound change
from 判ずる (haN-z-uru). It's hard to say which is the more basic, if
either. Surely there has to have been an original pronounceable form
before the invention of 活用, but it's pretty much lost in the fog of
prehistory.

I and some others have seen links between certain nouns ending in -a or
-o and verbs, such as nawa 'rope' ~ naw-u 'twist into rope,' onara ~
nar-u 'sound,' oya 'parent, elder' ~ oy-iru 'age,' hukuro 'bag' ~
hukur-eru 'bulge,' etc. I supposed in a minor paper I published in my
student days that -a and -o were suffixes to make the verb roots
pronounceable, but if naw-u (nap-u) doesn't show up in OJ a case could
be made for this sort of thing being noun turned to verb.

There are of course suffixes that do (well, did) change nouns to verbs.
One of the busiest was -m-u/-m-eru, as in hara-m-u, tasika-m-eru,
probably tuka-m-u, huka-m-eru, aware-m-u, etc., etc.

In the end, I would agree with you if your notion is that nouns are more
basic than verbs, if only because it seems that inflection has to be a
later development than fixed words. For what it's worth ...

Bart
.

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