と言ってもいい

healer · 29 Jan 2022

I have learnt to use だ and です for the casual and the polite respectively with sentence end with noun or な-adjective as well as nothing and です with い-adjective. My experience seems also tells me anything else such as those end with an expression or a particle or a suffix and so on go with だand です. Have I understood correctly?

I have come across the following three sentences on a web page. I reckon the first one is wrong because it should be ended with だ because といってもいい is an expression if I understand correctly. The other two end correctly. Would you think so?
彼はやさしいが、だまされやすいといってもいい。
それまで受けたテストの中でもっともむずしかったと言ってもいいでしょう。
彼の話はばかばかしいと言ってもいいくらいだった。

By the way, could you tell me if the following grammatical? Thanks!
彼女はネイティブと言ってもいいくらい日本語が上手だ。

mdchachi · 29 Jan 2022

i-adjectives have tense already so there's no need to end with だ or です。However you'll often see a です because this makes it polite.
So the sentence is grammatical and perfectly fine.

The last sentence looks ok to me. It has a lot going on in it so it could be confusing.

healer · 30 Jan 2022

mdchachi said:
i-adjectives have tense already so there's no need to end with だ or です。

I had supposed といってもいい was an expression and the adjective いい would not be taken out of context.
Is だろう the casual form of でしょう and derived from だ? Is it grammatical to have it after the い-adjective as per the example below? Thanks mdchachi san.
それはいい考えだ。いや，すばらしいといってもいいだろう。

bentenmusume · 30 Jan 2022

I had supposed といってもいい was an expression and the adjective いい would not be taken out of context.

What do you mean by this? といってもいい is a fixed expression, yes, but the いい is still the い-adjective いい, the same as 天気がいい or 気持ちがいい, etc., and
だ is never grammatical after an い-adjective.

Is だろう the casual form of でしょう and derived from だ? Is it grammatical to have it after the い-adjective as per the example below?

Yes, and yes. だろう is the casual form of でしょう and you can consider it the conjectural form of the copula だ.
But だろう and でしょう are both grammatical after い-adjectives, while だ is not.
The plain form of an い-adjective predicate is simply the adjective (e.g. 良い, 面白い, 美味しい, etc.) without だ.
This is a very simple and fundamental rule of Japanese grammar.

それはいい考えだ。いや，すばらしいといってもいいだろう。

Yes, this is grammatical.
The following would also be grammatical:
それはいい考えだ。いや、すばらしいといってもいいでしょう。
それはいい考えだ。いや、すばらしいといってもいい。

The same sentence with だ at the end is ungrammatical, the same way the following are grammatical:
◯ 面白いだろう
◯ 面白いでしょう
◯ 面白い
but
☓ ~~面白いだ~~
...is not.

No offense intended, but this is a very basic rule of Japanese grammar, so given your relatively advanced level, it's somewhat surprising to me if you're only realizing this now. If I'm misunderstanding your point of confusion, my apologies, and please don't hesitate to elaborate.

Toritoribe · 31 Jan 2022

I think でしょう/だろう can be considered as a suffix for guess after i-adjectives or verbs. It doesn't conjugate, and therefore doesn't provide the tense, affirmative or negative, etc. to the sentence, as same as です after i-adjectives.
e.g.
言ってもいいでしょう/だろう
言ってもよかったでしょう/だろう
言うのはよくないでしょう/だろう
言うのはよくなかったでしょう/だろう

するでしょう/だろう
したでしょう/だろう
しないでしょう/だろう
しなかったでしょう/だろう

cf.
言ってもいいです
言ってもよかったです
言うのはよくないです
言うのはよくなかったです

The copula can be attached particles in appropriate contexts.
e.g.
父は多発性硬化症と診断されました。働き盛りの時にです。

A: 原則として全ての事業所を回らせていただいてます
B: 償却資産税の申告をしている全ての事業所をですか？

As for 言ってもいいくらいだった, くらい functions as a noun. That's why copula can be attached.
e.g.
ばかばかしいと言ってもいいくらいの話
ばかばかしいと言ってもいいくらいがちょうどいい
ばかばかしいと言ってもいいくらいでもしょうがない

mdchachi · 31 Jan 2022

bentenmusume said:
What do you mean by this? といってもいい is a fixed expression, yes, but the いい is still the い-adjective いい, the same as 天気がいい or 気持ちがいい, etc., and
だ is never grammatical after an い-adjective.

If you throw in a ん though it does become grammatical doesn't it? Like 熱いんだ。Or is that colloquial but not grammatical? Or maybe nobody does this and I'm just way off base?

Toritoribe · 31 Jan 2022

It's because の/ん functions as a noun, as same as くらい I wore above.

healer · 8 Feb 2022

Thanks Bentenmusume-san and Toritoribe-san for helping me.

bentenmusume said:
But だろう and でしょう are both grammatical after い-adjectives, while だ is not.

To be complete, could you please also comment on whether だろう and でしょう work exactly the same with な-adjectives and noun?

Toritoribe said:
償却資産税の申告をしている全ての事業所をですか？

I'm not sure how 事業所をですか grammatically put together. I have learnt it is simply a verb left out and the listener or reader is expected to be able to fill in. I, however, am not too sure what could the missing verb be. It is new to me where をand ですcome together. What I have come across before are sentences ending with を. Please help me understand. Thanks!

Toritoribe said:
As for 言ってもいいくらいだった, くらい functions as a noun.

It seems to me any word other than verb and い-adjective at the end of a sentence take だ. Would you agree?

mdchachi · 8 Feb 2022

healer said:
It is new to me where をand ですcome together.

That's because they don't go together.

healer said:
What I have come across before are sentences ending with を.

(Grammatically complete) sentences don't end in を.

healer said:
It seems to me any word other than verb and い-adjective at the end of a sentence take だ. Would you agree?

It would be more correct that these take a copula such as だ、です、でしょう、だろう etc.

bentenmusume · 8 Feb 2022

healer said:
I'm not sure how 事業所をですか grammatically put together.

You can think of it as being quoted or something. This can happen with other particles, too, and yes, there is a verb being implied.

よく分からないです。
何が、ですか？（＝何が分からないのですか？）

きちんと見せてほしいです。
何を、ですか？（＝何を見せてほしいのですか？）

As mdchachi-san says, these aren't grammatically complete sentences, and the particle isn't directly connected to the copula.
It's a fragment, with the copula tacked on at the end for politeness/register.

You can also see inverted sentences like:

どうしても知りたいです。誰も教えてくれなかった真実を。
（＝誰も教えてくれなかった真実を、どうしても知りたいです。）

healer · 10 Feb 2022

healer said:
could you please also comment on whether だろう and でしょう work exactly the same with な-adjectives and noun?

Do we attach だろう and でしょう to な-adjectives and noun like what we would with い-adjectives and verb?

Lastly I thank both mdchachi-san and bentenmusume-san for your help especially for those illustrative examples Bentenmusume-san gave.

bentenmusume · 10 Feb 2022

healer said:
Do we attach だろう and でしょう to な-adjectives and noun like what we would with い-adjectives and verb?

I'm glad the examples were helpful.

And the answer to your question is yes, だろう and でしょう can attach to all of those forms.
だ (as previously mentioned) does not straightly attach to い-adjectives or verbs.

Toritoribe · 11 Feb 2022

healer said:
I'm not sure how 事業所をですか grammatically put together. I have learnt it is simply a verb left out and the listener or reader is expected to be able to fill in. I, however, am not too sure what could the missing verb be.

償却資産税の申告をしている全ての事業所を回るのですか？

healer said:
It seems to me any word other than verb and い-adjective at the end of a sentence take だ. Would you agree?

だ can't be attached to sentence ending particles.
e.g.
×そうですねだ
×違うよだ
×いいなあだ

This is an exception I can think of now.

healer · 11 Feb 2022

Thanks everyone for all the help.

と言ってもいい

healer

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mdchachi

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bentenmusume

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