(In comparison, regular nouns can function adjectivally by taking the particle 〜の -no, which is analyzed as the genitive case.)
Japanese adjectival nouns can also be used predicatively – in that use, they do not take the -na suffix, but normally combine with forms of the copular verb.
'form' or 'figure' or 'appearance' or 'description') refers to the semantic aspect of these words as qualifying the state or condition of a noun (名詞, meishi); and dōshi (動詞, lit.
Historically, this term was used tentatively by some grammarians, such as Matsushita Daizaburō, for words that are now called keiyōshi (形容詞, lit.
'stative working-word')[a][9] Ōtsuki Fumihiko, while still following the mainstream terminology in his own grammar,[10] expressed his opinion that Japanese "adjectives," due to their affinity with "verbs," are not at all like adjectives in English, Latin, French, German, etc., and suggested keiyō dōshi as an alternative term like Matsushita.
The Japanese term is not necessarily at odds with the English term adjectival noun, since in traditional Japanese grammar, keiyō dōshi includes the copula, while the adjectival noun in the analysis described here does not include the copula.
In fact, by some analyses, nouns and na-nominals are fundamentally grammatically the same, where 〜の vs. 〜な when used attributively is simply a conventional stylistic complementary distribution, with 〜の／〜な being allomorphs.
This view is reinforced by the fact that some words, such as 特別 tokubetsu "special", can take either a 〜の or a 〜な, depending on the phrase.
The nari ones developed into the adjectival nouns (naru contracted to na, while nari was replaced by da (the copula)) that are the subject of this article, while the tari ones mostly died out over the course of Late Middle Japanese, being mostly gone by Early Modern Japanese, surviving as fossils in a few words which are generally considered somewhat stiff or archaic.
These include 単なる tannaru "mere, simple" or 聖なる seinaru "holy" and are generally classed as rentaishi.
The newly developed tar- inflections are used in kanbun kundoku (reading a Chinese text in Japanese).
The later half of Early Modern Japanese as found in Edo has a single type of adjectival noun with the following inflections.
For attributive na (rentaikei): For predicative da (shūshikei): In some regions, these changes progressed differently, resulting in forms such as ja (Chūgoku, Shikoku, or Kyūshū; particularly common in Hiroshima) or ya (associated with Kansai dialect, particularly Ōsaka.)
Miyagawa argues that Japanese adjectival nouns can be classified using Noam Chomsky's lexical feature system.