This agglutinative inflexion is practically confined to the verb, and—to a slight extent—to nouns adjective, simple or verbalized. What may be called the stem of the verb shows a pure vocalic inflexion in a, e, i, o or u. The stem in u is the form usually found in native and foreign dictionaries—in Lemaréchal’s it is the stem in e or i. To the stem the various locutions are suffixed to construct the forms representing, logically, moods and tenses as well as negative, causative, and potential-passive ‘voices’.
The stems in e, i and o are used as imperatives; koge, row!, mi, look!, ko come!, often with addition of the vocative particle yo (or ro)—miyo, koyo. They are also used as ‘indefinite’ (Chamberlain) forms, mood and tense being determined by that of the principal verb in the sentence. Before proceeding further it is well to state that in the regular Japanese sentence the principal verb is always at the end, the object (if expressed) in the middle, and the subject (if expressed) at the beginning of the sentence, while words of qualification precede the words qualified. In poetry however, especially in the Manyôshiu, inversions are common.
All syllables in Japanese are open, and the terminal syllables of the stems are the consonants b, f, g, k, m, n, r, s, the digraph ts, w, y, and z followed by the vowels a, e, i, o, u (also u without consonant as in suu, e stem suwe, to place). Before i ts becomes ch, and before e and a t, before i s becomes sh and z zh; before every vowel except u f becomes h. All verbs have the stem in u, most verbs have also the stem in a and i, some have also the stem in e only, some in i only. There are a very few irregular verbs. The following list of verbs and their stems will illustrate the above remarks:—
The Japanese verb has neither number nor person, the forms that follow therefore are indefinite as to number and person. The locutions—or more strictly the complements that with the stem make up the locution—are given below as suffixed to the stem.
Two moods may be distinguished. One I call Independent, in which form the verb is unconnected with any other verb, the other Dependent, in which the verb is connected with some verb in the Independent mood.[2] Mr. Chamberlain calls them Indicative and Oblique respectively.
There are in each mood three forms or quasi-tenses—a present, temporally indefinite; a past denoting action or state completed at or before the present or some indicated past time; and a future denoting action, &c., that may or will be completed at a future (or past-future) time. Each of these tenses in the Independent mood has a predicative or simpler form and a relative form—as relating to some noun. It is the simpler form, identical with the stem in u, which is found in the dictionaries (in Lemaréchal’s the stem in a, i, or e is found). The relative form ends in uru (modern iru or eru). Thus toki sugu, time passes; suguru toki, tempus quod fugit (some verbs in uru are transitive as tatsu, stand, tatsuru, make stand, set up). Only those verbs which have e or i stems throughout appear to possess this relative form;[3] in verbs with i and a stems this morphological distinction does not exist.
The Past has four forms, each double (P. predicative, R. relative).
(1) P. ki, R. -shi.
(2) P. tari (te-ari), R. -taru (te-aru).