In a previous post I mused,
Then I came to feel a few minutes ago that だ becomes な／の in a slight prettying up of statements and explanations. Consider: 〜なの could be from (a hypothetical)〜だの and in actual reality we do know that だから changes to (な)ので. I don't know. Maybe this is a crazy theory. It only really helps for remembering anyways. If you remember things in a circuitous manner like me.
Two points on which I was wrong: だ does not become の under any circumstances, and だから is not conjugatively related to なので. But I am more than ever sure that だ becomes な and that they and the other copula are helper verbs. I just read in one of my books the following:「〜だ」は「の」の前では「〜な」にかわります。
Also something that a little Jeffy bird helped me to realize is that, unless they are strong as nouns, without a な or a だ the 形容動詞s are like half-living lingual things. The な／だ on the end is a little helper verb that gives them life. I spent a long time thinking things like ます and です and だ aren't verbs, but they really do fit most of the description. The only thing is the limits on their conjugation forms.
Anyways, it's just my Western brain's systematizing of it all, but still.
As for my other copula curiosity of late, I haven't found much on the である／だ＝なり front, but I did find this sentence tonight: 時は金なり. Time is money. I imagine なり shows up a lot in Shakespeare translated to Japanese.
Doesn't contemporary Japanese treat things such as ます,です,である／だ as jyo-doushi? I don't know much about modern Japanese grammar.
ReplyDeleteMost of them come from old Japanese jyo-doushi + some jyoshi and as you say, jyo-doushi are literally helper verbs. The problem is, they 've settled in the current form through several euphonic changes. I think that's why their declension is so irregular. Because they're helper, they cannot stand on their own as you say.
As regards keiyoudouchi, I think you're right. The examples, kirei or shizuka -da/na can be thought of just as a combination of kirei or shizuka +da/na. Then what are kirei and shizuka? They look like a noun but I don't think they have the full status because you can't use them independently as a noun. They have a kind of pariah status. It seems, though, some of them are struggling hard for their emancipation. One success story is genki.
We could say "genki ga aru/nai" besides "genkida" and so already, it had a better status but
until recently, genki coudln't be used like "genki wo morau/ataeru".
Now sometimes, I hear it though I will never ever say it!
In some years, I'm sure, though reluctantly, it'll have completed genki's liberation.
In old Japanese, two jyo-doushi たり and なり played the role of だ
of today. The former is not used in modern Japanese but なり is still used in an archaic style.
Hence frequent use in Shakespear.
On the side note, the ancient たり and なり come from similar origin: と+あり and に+あり respectively. The usage of と+ に are similar to those of our days.
I love having a Japanese person that can talk about Japanese language around!
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