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why is it that some 形容動詞 accepts の after it while some only accepts な after
it?

Examples:

の only: 普通、大勢

な or の: 初心、特別、特殊

Is there a way for us to tell if a 形容動詞 needs a の or な particle after it.. or
is it just by brute force memory?

Btw my second question is that if a 形容動詞 accepts both の and な after it, is it
true that usually we will use the な, even though の is grammatically correct
too?
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2011-06-10T03:17:50.157
920
2023-09-03T03:32:10.063
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question
grammar particles politeness nuances na-adjectives
why is it that some 形容動詞 accepts の after it while some only accepts な after it?
I'm not sure if there's a real answer to that. At least not something that
will help you learn which is which. Some 形容動詞 take な, some take の, and some
take both. How did that happen? That's quite simple.

All 形容動詞 are in fact a special class of nouns. In academic English material,
they are often called "adjectival nouns" or even "descriptive nouns", to
emphasize the fact that they're nouns. So how do you use a noun to describe
another noun? Since Classical Japanese we had two main methods of doing that:

  1. Using the the copula (ADJであるNOUN)
  2. Using the genitive relation particle (ADJのNOUN)

In Classical Japanese, the copula was なり, and for genitive relation we also
had が besides の, but it probably worked more or less the same. In the modern
language, the copula なり went out of use and was replaced by だ in all forms
except for the positive present form, where な (which comes from なり) remains in
use.

The inconsistency is mainly there, in the positive present form, since in
other forms (past or negative), the copula is used always. That's because you
just cannot use の in other forms, since it's not copula and therefore does not
conjugate, so you have to replace it with forms of the modern copula だ. な, on
the other hand, can be said to be a copula, but it conjugates like だ in all
other forms, so in these forms all adjectival nouns behave the same.

But still, why is the choice of の, な or both in the present-positive form so
inconsistent? That's just how languages tend to work, chaotically. When you
have two possible ways of forming an adjective (with a copula and with a
genitive particle), people use both, and both forms come into what linguists
call 'a competition'. There are several possible resolutions to a competition,
such as one of the forms dying in favor of the other, or each form grabbing a
different meaning. In this case, we have a [complementary
distribution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_distribution), where
some adjectival nouns settled take な, some settled for の, and for a good
measure of irregularity some settled for both.
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2011-06-10T07:19:41.350
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2023-08-28T21:56:44.227
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answer
There is no such thing as a 形容動詞 which 'takes の' as opposed to な. The dōshi
component of the name reflects the fact that na inflects like a verb, albeit
in a very limited fashion---we only find -na, when used attributively, and -ni
when used adverbially, e.g., 華やかな装い, 華やかに装っている. As has been pointed out in
posts elswhere this na is the remains of the literary naru.

Normally, keiyōdōshi cannot be used as subjects or objects as they are not
nouns, e.g, *benri ga/wo, and the normal (abstract) noun formation would be to
add -sa, e.g, from benri na, 'convenient', benrisa 'convenience', but there
are examples of keiyōdōshi that fuction as abstract nouns as well, e.g.,
teinei na taido, teinei ga daiichi ('Politeness is first', a slogan).

The examples of 普通, 大勢 are nouns. If they occur in a construction with の, such
普通の態度 or 大勢の人 they should be construed as the predicate of a sentence with the
copula as verb, hence, ‘ōzei no hito’ is to be construed as 'ōzei de aru
tokoro no hito' 'people such that they are a great number', 'futsū no taido'
as 'futsū de aru tokoro no taido', 'an attitude such that it is normal'. (This
construction, Verb + tokoro no, appears to have come from the translation of
the English relative pronouns, but it is sometimes used in scholarly texts, or
the like, to make an attributive relationship explicit, which is why I have
used it here.)

Words like 特別 and 特殊 form another class in that they can take な when used
attributively, like keiyōdōshi, e.g., 特殊な技能, but may also take の, 特殊の技能.
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answer