I’d just like to preface that I already have my primary Japanese learning resources, and I don’t plan to switch from them. This is more out of curiosity—me nerding our about Japanese linguistics while not yet being good enough to read actual grammar sources in Japanese.
From what I understand, Japanese linguists and English-speaking linguists have very different ideas about how the Japanese language works. A few examples I can think of off the top of my head include:
* English speakers think of -*masu*, *-tai*, etc. as being being verb inflections; Japanese people think of these as being their own “auxiliary verbs.”
* What English speakers call “*na* adjectives” or “adjectival nouns,” the Japanese call “adjectival verbs”; and while English speakers might consider *kirei da* as an adjectival noun + copula, a Japanese speaker might consider the whole phrase as an adjectival verb, with *kirei* as a stem.
I’m wondering: are there any resources in English that explain Japanese grammar as it’s understood by Japanese people?
by ExquisiteKeiran