Kanji in this term | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
上 | 二 | 段 | 活 | 用 |
かみ Grade: 1 |
に Grade: 1 |
だん Grade: 6 |
かつ Grade: 2 |
よう Grade: 2 |
kun'yomi | goon | kan'on |
Compound of 上 (kami, “upper”) + 二段活用 (nidan katsuyō, “bigrade conjugation”).
Literally, 上二段 (kami nidan, “upper bigrade”) refers to how the inflected endings are located in the gojūon table. 上 (kami, “upper”) means the vowel イ (i), which is written above the vowel エ (e), the other inflection-related vowel. 二段 (nidan, “two grades”) means two vowels are involved, since each 段 (dan, “row”) of the table contains one vowel. Thus this can be understood as “two-voweled conjugation in i”.
上二段活用 • (kami nidan katsuyō) ←かみにだんくわつよう (kami nidan kwatuyou)?
未然形 Irrealis |
連用形 Adverbial |
終止形 Conclusive |
連体形 Attributive |
已然形 Realis |
命令形 Imperative | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
起く (ok-, “to rise”) | 起き (oki2 → oki) | 起き (oki2 → oki) | 起く (oku) | 起くる (okuru) | 起くれ (okure) | 起き (oki2 → oki) 起きよ (oki2yo2 → okiyo) |
落つ (ot-, “to fall”) | 落ち (oti → ochi) | 落ち (oti → ochi) | 落つ (otu → otsu) | 落つる (oturu → otsuru) | 落つれ (oture → otsure) | 落ち (oti → ochi) 落ちよ (otiyo2 → ochiyo) |
老ゆ (oy-, “to age”) | 老い (oi) | 老い (oi) | 老ゆ (oyu) | 老ゆる (oyuru) | 老ゆれ (oyure) | 老い (oi) 老いよ (oiyo2 → oiyo) |
The subscripts in the table above indicate differences in vowel class that were already being lost in Old Japanese. It remains unclear what those different vowel classes may have meant. See the Syllables section in the Wikipedia article on Old Japanese for more details.