A handbook of Japanese grammar (review)

This book by Hiroko Storm covers the major areas of the Japanese language. It is intended for students and teachers of Japanese and contains the following chapters and an index: ‘Pronunciation’ (5–10), ‘The writing system’ (11–23), ‘Vocabulary’ (24–36), ‘Parts of speech’ (37–95), ‘Numerals and counters’ (96–105), ‘Word order’ (106–8), ‘Conditionals’ (109–16), ‘Double noun phrase sentences’ (117–20), ‘Noun modifiers’ (121–37), ‘Comparatives and superlatives’ (138–41), ‘Causatives’ (142–46), ‘Passives’ (147–56), ‘Requests, invitations, and commands’ (157–61), ‘Potentials’ (162–65), ‘Purposes’ (166–67), ‘Honorifics’ (168–81), and ‘Male and female speech’ (182–86).

This is a reference book rather than a textbook in that the grammar is not introduced incrementally, but is presented in autonomous chapters. However, the paragraphs are numbered consecutively throughout the book for easy cross-reference. In order to benefit from this handbook, at least some previous knowledge of Japanese is imperative.

The phenomena described are illustrated by a wealth of easy-to-understand examples. Each example is provided with its English translation, but there are no actual glosses, which may make comprehension more difficult for beginners. However, since the examples are generally short and contain mostly basic vocabulary, this is not overly problematic.

The most positive feature of this book is that S makes an effort to describe subtle nuances in meaning that exist between certain words or structures. Similarly, she frequently introduces Japanese phenomena by explicit contrast with comparable English constructions. These intra- and interlingual comparisons can be very helpful.

It should be mentioned that Japanese writing is used only in the chapter explicitly devoted to the writing system. The Japanese material in the book is written in romanized script (using a slightly modified version of the Hepburn system). While learners may differ on whether this is to be seen as an advantage or a disadvantage, the exclusive use of ‘romaji’ in this book is all the more surprising as S herself stresses the ‘effectiveness of kanji’ (19).

The organization of the material in the volume seems a little arbitrary in places. For instance, the subsection on verbs in the chapter on parts of speech comprises the various functions of the -te-form. Since some of these functions are not specific to verbs, they are explained again in the sections on adjectives and the copula. Similarly, the distinction between ‘plain style’ and ‘normal style’ is explained in the section on verbs, not because it belongs only there but because this is the first time it becomes necessary to make this distinction. Also, at the end of Ch. 16 (on honorifics), S includes a section with exercises on the use of honorifics—not a bad idea as such, but as they are the first and only exercises in the entire volume, they somewhat come as a surprise.

Finally, the page layout lacks some clarity. Indenting of paragraphs, usually meant to facilitate reading, achieves the opposite effect when the paragraphs are very short and when portions of the text (the examples) are not indented. The typographical highlighting of the subheadings is not reader-friendly, and sometimes a (sub)heading is the last line on the bottom of the page.