I08 THE ADJECTIVE.
III. Adjectives have a form in ku, which is used when a verb follows, and which often, though not always, cor- responds to an English adverb in " ly ; " thus :
Ya ma ga takaku miemasu. The mountain looks
w.) Mgh looks J
Hayaku kite kudasai. p lease come quick i y .
Quickly coming condescend )
II 176. But in order to attain to a full and satisfactory in- telligence even of these Colloquial forms, it is necessary to dig deeper, and to see how matters stand in the Classical language, from which the Colloquial forms are derived. Observe at the outset that the inflections of Japanese adjectives have no reference whatever to such European grammatical categories as number, gender, or the degrees of comparison. Their object is partly to dis- tinguish the attributive from the predicative relation, partly to distinguish the end of a mere clause from the end of a complete sentence.
I 177. The classical termination of adjectives when used attributively is ki. Their termination when used pre- dicatively at the end of a sentence is ski. Hence this latter is called the " conclusive form," thus :
ATTRIBUTIVE. CONCLUSIVE.
Takaki yama, A high ( Yama takashi, The mountain mountain. is high.
Samuki kaze, A cold Kaze samushi, The wind is wind. ( cold.
II 178. It is from these two Classical forms in ki and ski that the single Colloquial form in i is derived, by the dropping of the distinctive consonants k and sh. In set speeches
