Question about conjugation tags

[gonz]

Ok, so this has been nagging at me for a while.

Take a word like 食べる

You can conjugate it into 食べます、たべません, etc.

If the べ is an unchanging part of the stem, then why is 食 "た"? Wouldn't it have made more sense for the kanji to have a たべ reading, since it's an unconjugated, permanent part of the stem?

 

[Toritoribe]

The classical form of the verb 食べる is 食ぶ. It belongs 下二段活用動詞; shimonidan conjugation verbs, and conjugates like 食べぬ/食べうる/食ぶ/食ぶる/食ぶれば/食べよ. Thus, as you can see, the stem is 食, not 食べ.

That's a quite understandable question. Many natives also use that rule to figure out what part of the verb the 送り仮名 is, but there are some exceptions like this.

 

[Ben Bullock]

Ok, so this has been nagging at me for a while.
Take a word like 食べる
You can conjugate it into 食べます、たべません, etc.
If the べ is an unchanging part of the stem, then why is 食 "た"? Wouldn't it have made more sense for the kanji to have a たべ reading, since it's an unconjugated, permanent part of the stem?

The extra "be" there is something called "okurigana". The Japanese government's rules for okurigana (sorry, I am not allowed to post the link here, Google for 送り仮名の付け方 to find it) require that the べ in 食べる is shown since it is the ending of this ichidan verb. Also there are two other, similar, verbs, 食う (kuu) and 食らう (kurau). However, I don't think there is any inflection of the verbs where taberu and kurau or kuu could be mistaken for one another.

 

[gonz]

The classical form of the verb 食べる is 食ぶ. It belongs 下二段活用動詞; shimonidan conjugation verbs, and conjugates like 食べぬ/食べうる/食ぶ/食ぶる/食ぶれば/食べよ. Thus, as you can see, the stem is 食, not 食べ.

That's a quite understandable question. Many natives also use that rule to figure out what part of the verb the 送り仮名 is, but there are some exceptions like this.

Thanks for the help. I heard something about the post-WWII language reform changing conjugations of words and verb classes and all that?

 

[Ben Bullock]

Thanks for the help. I heard something about the post-WWII language reform changing conjugations of words and verb classes and all that?

I've never heard of that. It seems unlikely that verb endings could be legislated, even in Japan.

 

[undrentide]

I've never heard of that. It seems unlikely that verb endings could be legislated, even in Japan. :eek2:

Maybe it's OP's misunderstanding, what was reformed after the WWII is the writing system (mainly hiragana/katakana) so that the writing would be as close as actual pronunciation.

歴史的仮名遣ひ（旧仮名遣ひ）→現代仮名遣い
歴史的仮名遣 - Wikipedia
Historical kana orthography - Wikipedia

 

[Toritoribe]

In classical Japanese grammar, only 11 verbs belongs to ichidan verbs(kamiichidan-10, shimoichidan-1), and all of them are single-mora stem verbs (no stem verbs in 国文法 classification.) Thus, most of all ichidan verbs used to be conjugated as nidan verbs like as 食べる in my previous post. That's why べる in 食べる is considered as the conjugation suffix in 国文法, even though べ isn't conjugated anymore in modern Japanese.

As for godan verbs, it's permitted to omit the unconjugated suffix from 送り仮名.
e.g.
あたる（godan）
○当たる
○当る

あてる（ichidan）
○当てる
×当る

当たる is more commonly used in these days, though.

I heard something about the post-WWII language reform changing conjugations of words and verb classes and all that?

Conjugation forms have been gradually changing. Even now, for instance, ら抜き言葉 (e.g. 食べれる vs. 食べられる, 来れる vs. 来られる) are steadily spreading.