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Subject: adjectival nouns vs. descriptive verbs
From: ラディカル新米
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 04:03:09 GMT
I'm a little confused on the differences of these two things. The way I differentiate them now is:
Descriptive verbs like 新しい, 高い, 安い, etc. all end in い.
Adjectival nouns like 便利, 静か, 上手, etc. do not end in い (with some exceptions: きれい, きらい, ていねい).
I don't exactly understand what these terms "descriptive verb" and "adjectival noun" mean. I've looked up definitions of the terms in English, but they didn't match my experience with these words in Japanese. Although my book encourages me not to think of these as adjectives because they are adjectives in english, I still feel like they're adjectives of sorts.
I know that to use descriptive verbs to modify, you can just put it before like 新しいビル, but with adjectival nouns you link with な like 静かなところ. I'm confused about 同じ though. This looks like an adjectival noun to me since it doesn't end in い, but, correct me if i'm wrong, is used like a descriptive verb when modifying, like 同じところ or 同じ色. Instead of 同じなところ or 同じな色 like i'd expect if it were an adjectival noun. Which is it?
ありがとうございます.
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