I’ve been noticing the ます stem being used in a sentence
I’ve read that it’s used like the て form to connect, And it’s generally more used in writing
Put I’ve been seeing a lot of nouns that are just the ます stem
Some examples are:
始める (To start) -> 始め (Beginning)
疑う (To doubt) -> 疑い (Doubt)
負ける (To lose) -> 負け (Defeat)
I know this doesn’t always work, But is there any patterns I can use for this ?
1 comment
Forming new words is called derivation, and it so happens that the result is not always predictable, even though there are some recogniseable patterns. Derivation also often havee unpredicatable gaps, i.e. verbs that do not have a noun derived with the stem form. I think there is a chapter in Natsuko Tsujimura’s Introduction to Japanese Linguistics dealing with this.