Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/570

550 motte; as neko de, by a cat. The number is not designated except when it is emphatic. When the noun is used without any words to mark its number, it is to be taken in a generic or abstract sense; thus kami may mean one god or all the gods; tsuki, one month or many months. If the number is very great and indefinite, it is expressed by sen, 1,000, or ban, 10,000; thus, ban-koku, all countries; ban-motsu, everything. The plural is also designated by su, several, and sho, many or all. All these are Chinese. The plural is formed by duplicating the word, as ware-ware, we; hito-hito, people; tokoro-dokoro, places; also by the words domo, tachi, ra, nado, nazo, and for Chinese words shu and to, following the noun. Gender is designated, when it must be expressed, by the words otoko, male, and onna, female; as otoko no ko, a male child, boy; onna-gami, a female divinity, goddess; also in Chinese words by nan, niyo; as nan-shi, a boy, niyo-shi, a girl. In the case of animals and birds the gender is designated by prefixing me and o (contractions of mesu, female, and osu, male), as me-ushi, a cow, o-ushi, a bull; men-dori, a hen, o-tori, a cock. By prefixing ko (a child), a class of diminutive nouns is formed; as ko-bune, a little boat; ko-ushi, a calf; ko-ishi, a pebble. Also ō (a contraction of ōkii, great, big) is used as an amplifying prefix; as ō-bune, a large boat, ō-kaze, a tornado; ō-ame, a storm of rain. Nouns expressing abstract qualities are formed by suffixing the particle sa (a contraction of sama, state, condition) to the root form of the adjective; as shiro, white, shirosa, the whiteness; taka, high, takasa, the height.—The root forms of verbs are also nouns; as yorokobi, joy; urami, hatred. The word te, hand, added to the roots of verbs, denotes the agent of the action expressed by the verb; as kai-te, the buyer, uri-te, the seller. Nouns are also formed by adding the word kata, side, mode, to the root form of verbs; as shi-kata, way of doing, koshi-kata, the past. The attributive form of the adjective is often treated as a noun. Many compound nouns are formed: 1, by joining together two nouns, as karasu-hebi, a black snake (literally, crow-snake); 2, by an adjective and noun, as shiro-gane, white metal, silver; 3, by a noun and verb, as asa-ne, morning sleep; and 4, by a verb and a noun, as hiki-ami, a seine. The Chinese nouns are declined or take the postpositions in the same way as the native words.—The words classed or used as pronouns are numerous, and may be divided into personal, demonstrative, interrogative, reflexive, indefinite, and distributive. There are no relative pronouns; where in English a relative pronoun is used, in Japanese the person or thing is put in direct subjection to the verb, which acts as an attributive adjective; as tegami wo kaku hito, a man who writes letters (literally, letter-writing-man). In conversation as well as in books personal pronouns seem to be carefully avoided, in this respect agreeing with the custom of the Chinese. In books especially it is often difficult to distinguish the speaker, the person spoken of, and the person spoken to. This is indicated mainly by the style of language employed, which varies with the rank or social position of the person addressed or spoken of. Most of the words used as personal pronouns are such as express humility on the part of the speaker, and honor the person addressed.—The ancient Japanese cardinal numbers are: ひと, f'to, h'to, one; フタ, f'ta, two; ミ, mi, three; ヨ, yo, four; イツ, itsu, five; ム, mu, muyu, six; ナヽ, nana, seven; ヤ, ya, eight; コヽノツ, kokonotsu, nine; トオ, toö, once ten; ソ, so, termination of tens; モヽ, momo, hundred; 朩, fo, termination of hundreds; チ, tsi, thousand, ヨロヅ, yorodzu, ten thousand. With the exception of these, the Japanese use the Chinese numerals, as well as the Chinese systems of weights, measures, and notation of time. The adjective is not inflected to indicate either case, gender, number, or comparison. But in order to express its relation to other words as an attributive, predicative, or adverb, it takes as suffixes to its root form the syllables i or ki, shi, and ku; thus, the form samu, cold, as an attributive is samui or samuki; as a predicative, samushi; and as an adverb, samuku. In the colloquial the terminal syllable i is used also to express the predicative form; as fuyu ga samui, the winter is cold. The comparative degree is denoted by means of the words yori, from, and nao, more, yet; as yuki wa kami yori shiroshi, snow is whiter than paper, or nao yoi, better. The superlative is expressed by the aid of certain adverbs: mottomo, indeed; itatte, exceedingly; goku or shigoku, superlatively; hanahada, ito, very; dai-ichi-no, or ichi-ban, number one. Chinese words take the attributive adjective form by means of the auxiliary words naru and na, as kon-kiu naru hito, a poor man; or when qualifying another Chinese word, merely by preceding it, as guwai koku, a foreign country. Adjectives are formed from nouns by the use of the postposition no; as mo no hanashi, a false story; ishi no iye, a stone house; also by suffixing to them the word rashii or rashiki, like, or gamashii; as onna-rashii, womanlike; otoko-rashii, manlike. They are formed from verbs by means of shii (a contraction of shiki, to spread); thus from osore, to fear, is formed osoroshii, fearful. Several forms of the verb act also as attributive adjectives, viz., the indicative present in u or ru, the preterite in ta, taru, and shi, and the negative indicative in nu, zaru, and negative preterite in ji. Many adjectives take the substantive verb ari as a suffix to the adverbial form, and are conjugated like a verb; thus samuku, the adverbial form of samu, and ari, to be, become samukaru, to be cold; preterite samukatta, was cold; future or dubitative, samukarō; negative present, samukaradzu, is not cold; negative preterite, samukunakatta, was not cold. In construction the attributive adjective, and also the