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The full sentence is:

この気持ちを表現する適当な言葉が **見つからない**

I could not find appropriate words to express these feelings. How do we end up
with this form in "-karanai"?
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2021-08-16T17:14:07.330
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question
grammar conjugations negation
What is the form of this verb? 見つからない　（見つける）
The verb is 見つかる, not 見つける. The former is intransitive (note the use of が),
and the latter transitive.
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2021-08-16T17:28:17.643
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answer
@aguijonazo gave you the brief answer. As noted, there are several clues in
the sentence to help you determine what the verb is and what its most likely
dictionary form is.

The first clue as @aguijonazo pointed out is the use of the particle が. That
indicates that 言葉 is the subject of the sentence. So, either the verb is in
the passive voice or the potential form or it's an intransitive verb.

We can rule out the passive voice since the endings for that are either られ
appended to the verb's stem or れ attached to the stem form used for the plain
negative form: in either case, in native grammars, this form is called the
_mizenkei_. The absence of れ makes it clear this is not a passive.

In a similar vein, you can rule out that this is a potential--apart from the
fact that you already have a translation. (There is much similar between the
form for the passive and the potential, but strictly speaking the passive is
formed off of the mizenkei, the potential is not.)

So what could the plain form of the verb be. We could make a number of
guesses:

  * みつける -- this appears to be what you guessed. But there is no way to transform this into any form looking like みつから. If you've got the plain form of a verb, then at most only the last " _syllable_ " of the verb is affected by any inflected forms; no inflection will push back any further into the verb stem.
  * みつく -- apart from this not being a word, if we pretend for a moment, we could try to inflect this as みつか, which would be the mizenkai of this hypothetical verb, but there is no ending ら that is ever added to this form.
  * みつかる -- This is the verb you're looking for. How could you have found it?

Start with the final ending of the verb, ない. That must be added to the
mizenkei of some verb, which could only be みつから. This is neither a passive nor
a potential form in appearance. So this must be the mizenkei of a verb ending
in る. Hence the dictionary form you're looking for is みつかる. .... which is a
quick look in the dictionary will nicely confirm as correct.
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answer