Customer Reviews

Reference Grammar of Japanese (Linguistic)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I agree with most of what's been said, so I'll just outline it from a perspective of someone who learnt Japanese in a communicative environment, and who is now looking at it from a linguistic perspective.

1. As per the title, the book is a reference grammar. This means that it is *not* intended for people wanting to simply learn from it. It means that it is *not* intended for beginners students. Rather, it means that the book is intended for two types of people; a) advanced/intermediate students/speakers of the language who are interested in having a *reference* to the lexico-grammatical forms of the language. b) Linguists who are interested in understanding some forms of the language for whatever reason.

To say that the book is 'learner unfriendly' goes against the whole point of the book; you simply cannot rate this book 1/5 because of this! The book is intended as a reference grammar!

2. The book is very extensive. I haven't come across any forms in the language that are not in this book. It also covers a lot of archaic and non-productive forms, which is helpful for people translating older or more formal texts. Despite what the author says in his defence, it is quite exhaustive. Yes this is daunting for some, but then you should obviously consult a different work.

3. The use of transliteration. The book doesn't use native Japanese characters because it is aimed not only as a reference for advanced students of the language, but for linguists who may not have time to learn any characters, or who may simply need to look up one form.

4. The book is accessible to linguists, and despite what has been said, is approachable from 'the middle'. You do not have to start at page 1 in order to use it.

I only have two criticisms:

a) Format. Sometimes, the lack of headings/bolding/boxes/etc makes it difficult to quickly locate specific forms or to find paradigm examples. This means that you have to sometimes read a few pages to find one construction.

b) Terms. The terms used by the author are sometimes a little idiosyncratic to the older schools of Japanese grammatical theory. Even though there is a 2004 edition, it seems that a few terms could be updated to more modern universally-accepted grammatical terms.

Other than that, I can definitely recommend the book!

If possible, I would give it four and a half stars.

I understand the other reviewers' concerns, it is probably not intended to teach usage, nor as a learner's book. For translations, it is indispensable. Pretty much everything questionable that I have run into when doing translations from late-19th century Japanese on has been explained in Martin. Yes, the index is huge and spotty at times, but it is well worth the pain if you want to do accurate translations, especially of historical materials.

As for the romaji, I've had it explained to me by people who like the Yale system that the system allows one to break up and analyze grammatical patterns in a way in which kana do not- for instance, when examining different inflections of "verbs." It's artificial, but at times more incisive a tool than using native Japanese orthography (which was developed after the spoken language anyway...). I learned using Jorden anyway, which renders my mind twisted according to some...

This is one of the most comprehensive grammars available on Japanese. Although old layout and typesetting has a detrimental effect on the readability, this is a must-have for any student of the Japanese language with aspirations towards linguistics.

I bought this book after being told it would be a very good reference material for advanced Japanese. This book is written by an acedemic for acedemics- linguists this is the one for you: it difficult to read, examples are hard to find just by flicking through this and its unnessessary complex in its layout. Even though it has been republished, it hasnt been seriously reviewed.
For any SERIOUS student of japanese be warned it is flawed in that;
-This book uses 'grammar' in the linguistis sense, not as a direct reference material. This makes this book very difficult to use, be prepared to trawl through long overblown grammatical explainations.
-the examples of Japanese are all written in Yale romaji (a crap system to begin with) and not Japanese fonts; this makes it difficult to work through. If you're going to use a rubbish system like Yale, or any romaji, you might as well use hiragana and kanji. This also makes a joke of the books claim to be a work for serious students of Japanese. This makes it a nightmare to search through, as well as guess to which word the author is referring to.
-the style is still like the very first edition(a breakthrough at the time). It badly needs to be carefully looked at again to make it clearer and more approachable.

However, it is a very indepth look at Japanese, and there is a wealth of knowledge hidden within the book. The author is very precise and sites all kinds of examples, from the classical, formal, honorific to all kinds of dialects. If you are willing to take time you will get alot out of it; but if you need a guide for translation, or learning grammar; ignore this, go and buy a conscise ikkyu guide, grammar dictionary, and/or relevant dictionary written in Japanese. They will be a lot clearer, cheaper, and there are so many different types you should find something to fit perfectly to your needs. Personally thats what im doing.
ps. If you do Korean, the same goes for his korean grammar as well.

I imagine this book would be a useful reference for advanced students of Japanese, professional translators, and those deeply interested in linguistics. However, the book's academic style and intricately detailed discussions are not useful to me, an intermediate student of Japanese with only a passing interest in linguistics,

This book is for serious linguists studying Japanese. If you are looking for a reference book as a learner of Japanese, you'd better find another one.

Buying this book was a mistake.
I had recently read The Structure of the Japanese Language (Current Studies in Linguistics) by Susumu Kuno: I found so many hints and enlightment on this book that I thought it could be a good idea to have a grammar centred on linguistic aspects...but Martin's grammar didn't help me at all: it's hard to read and it's impossible to use as a reference book: the index is very extensive (something like 100 pages) but if you go in the section you're interested in you cannot find a clear and complete explanation of the matter...it's like you first need to read the intire book from page 1 to bottom to be able to understand what that is about.
I didn't want to rate it because I cannot state a judgement on something I can't really understand: I study communication sciences (and I have some Linguistic studies on my back), I speak 5 languages but I'm not a Linguistic teacher.
Anyway the rating is a required form field: here I am with a 1 because the book has no use for me.