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寒い can become 寒くない, which is apparently also an i-adjective. Can it be further
conjugated to 寒くなくない?

What about 寒くなくなくない, and so on? Do Japanese speakers regard such expressions
as outright ungrammatical or merely silly? (Silly as in, in English, multiple
negations like "It's not the case that it's not the case that … it's cold" are
silly but not ungrammatical.)

What about verbs? I know the causative-passive 食べさせられる (to be made to eat) is
legit, but is there such a thing as, say, potential-causative-passive-
potential? In English, "can be made to be able to eat" is perfectly
grammatical and can be actually useful, as when discussing an anorexia
patient. How would one say it in Japanese?

Is it grammatical to say 食べられさせられられる (食べる -> potential 食べ ~~る~~ られる ->
causative 食べられ ~~る~~ させる -> passive 食べられさせ ~~る~~ られる -> potential, the final
form 食べられさせられ ~~る~~ られる — not sure if I did it right)?

I'm asking this mainly out of theoretical rather than practical interests, but
I would also appreciate information about limits of conjugation in ordinary
conversation.
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2020-11-25T09:23:27.467
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2020-11-25T19:16:03.570
2020-11-25T10:30:00.847
41005
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question
grammar conjugations
Can verbs/i-adjectives be indefinitely conjugated, or is there a limit?
Let's talk about something practical first. Something like 食べさせられたくなかったです,
beautifully explained in [this
article](https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2017/07/verbs.html), is probably
the longest natural verb "form" that may appear in ordinary conversations.

> Also, you don't need to worry about extremely long verbs conjugations. They
> usually do not stack as many times as the number of colors in the rainbow.

There are rules regarding the order of stacking conjugations. "Can be made to
be able to eat" is 食べられるようにさせられうる, but this is not a conjugation of one verb.

Also, double-negation is a relatively common pattern in Japanese. 食べなくない, or
more commonly 食べなくはない, means "I'm not saying I won't eat it" or "Admittedly I
will eat it."

  * [What does ...なくはない mean?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/33401/5010)
  * [Double negation of an i-adjective](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/73991/5010)

* * *

Now, let's move on to something which I don't think is not impractical. If you
don't mind sounding silly, it's indeed possible to stack many more
conjugations and helping verbs for fun! 寒くなくなくなくなくなくない is perfectly valid as a
wordplay, and children love something like this. [Lyrics sometimes contain
なくなくなくない](https://www.uta-
net.com/user/index_search/search2.html?frm=ichiran&kw=%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8F%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8F%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84).
A more "sophisticated" version would be 寒くないわけではなからざらずんばあらざらじ (septuple-
negative; children do not understand this).

When I was a middle school student, I joined all the humble expressions I knew
and made the most humblestestest expression just for fun:
食べさせていただかせてもらわせられたてまつりつかまつりはべりおります (≒ "It's my pleasure to humbly appreciate
that I am allowed to be honored to be delighted to eat it."). I believe this
is "grammatical", but of course it's nothing more than a silly wordplay, and
it would be simply rude if I used it in real business settings.
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2020-11-25T19:16:03.570
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answer