Making Sense of Japanese Grammar

3. An explicit subject is optional

3 An explicit subject is optional English requires an explicit subject in every sentence except imperative sentences (e.g., “Stop!”). In Japanese, however, the subject is optional for any type of sentence. So you hear minimal sentences like the following: Tabemasu. eat “I will eat.” Oishii-desu. delicious-Copula “It is delicious.” If you know Spanish, you might say that Spanish operates the same way, but there is a difference. In Spanish, the verb agrees with the person and the number of the subject (for example, [yo] voy “I go,” but [ella] va “she goes”). Person and number are crucial concepts determining the subject in English as well. For this reason, if a Spanish sentence has no explicit subject, it is relatively easy for an English speaker to guess who or what its subject is. By contrast, a Japanese verb is insensitive to such distinctions; the identical verb form is used for all persons and numbers. For instance, the sentence tabemasu may mean “I will eat,” “we will eat,” “you will eat,” “he will eat,” “she will eat,” “they will eat,” or “it will eat.” This is not to say that a Japanese verb provides no information about the identity of the subject. The types of information, however, are quite different from those you are familiar with, as we explain in Unit 65. For the moment, try to recover an appropriate subject from the context. Checking your comprehension: Try to identify from the context the subject for each of the following sentences: (1) (2) (1) Kinoo anime-o mimashita. (2) Totemo omoshirokatta-desu. 6 For related topics, see also Units 2, 4, 6, 7, and 65. ...