※  This (titular) assertion is questionable, so I'm (1) putting it in quotes,
and (2) placing an asterisk in front of it.

The following page starts with this assertion, which I had not heard before :

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_equivalents_of_adjectives>
>
> The Japanese language does not have words that function as adjectives in a
> syntactic sense – that is to say that [tree
> diagrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse_tree) of Japanese sentences
> can be constructed without employing adjective phrases. _[citation needed]_
>
> Nevertheless, there are words that function as adjectives in a semantic
> sense.

_[citation needed]_ ! ! !

Is this a commonly heard notion?

For example :

  * 立派で赤い花
  * 背が高く赤い花が立派なこの植物の名前を教えてください。

It's not obvious how Parse Trees of these strings (above) would be any
different from Parse Trees of English strings of similar meanings.

–- that is to say, a tree diagram (or a parse tree) of the latter Japanese
string (the sentence) seems like it would be a great example to illustrate
[adjective phrases] in Japanese.

This Jp wikipedia page doesn't have anything on it: [Wikipedia
形容詞](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BD%A2%E5%AE%B9%E8%A9%9E)

Any ideas?
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2016-10-12T21:51:44.530
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adjectives parsing orientalism
* "The Japanese language does not have words that function as adjectives in a syntactic sense"
Essentially, this is saying that syntactically adjectives work the same as
verbs. For example:

Japanese:

  * 食べる犬
  * 犬が食べる
  * 赤い犬
  * 犬が赤い

English:

  * The dog that eats
  * The dog eats
  * The red dog
  * The dog is red

Note that in English you can't say "The that eats dog", "The dog red", "The
dog that red" etc. You have to construct the sentences differently depending
on whether you're describing the dog with a verb or adjective. This isn't the
case in Japanese. If the only thing you knew about a word was how it fit into
a sentence, you couldn't tell if it was a verb or an adjective -- but you
could in English, because of the extra "that"s and "is"es. That's the
argument.

(Note that adjectives do have different _morphology_ , i.e. inflection, than
verbs. That isn't what Wikipedia is talking about.)
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