How many forms can a Japanese verb take?


Japanese verbs are quite complex compared to English verbs (Most English verbs
have five or six forms and _to be_ has eight not including archaic forms).
Their agglutinative nature means they have various parts which can be present
or not, or can take different morphemes.

What I'm wondering is if it is possible to calculate the total number of
possible forms this can lead to for a typical Japanese verb.

If it's not straightforward or generally talked about, a reference to a
discussion or research paper would also be a great answer.




It depends on how you count. There are ~10 base forms to which you can append
auxiliaries in a fairly regular manner. For reference, the handbook of
Japanese verbs covers 154 conjugations which stem from ten different forms:

  1. Conjunctive form (14)
  2. Dictionary form (39)
  3. Negative form (33)
  4. Conditional form (5)
  5. Imperative form (2)
  6. Volitional form (5)
  7. Te form (26)
  8. Ta form (25)
  9. Tara form (3)
  10. Tari form (2)

But there is a lot of similarity among those, and there are probably both more
and less inclusive lists.




It depends on how you count. There are ~10 base forms to which you can append
auxiliaries in a fairly regular manner. For reference, the handbook of
Japanese verbs covers 154 conjugations which stem from ten different forms:

  1. Conjunctive form (14)
  2. Dictionary form (39)
  3. Negative form (33)
  4. Conditional form (5)
  5. Imperative form (2)
  6. Volitional form (5)
  7. Te form (26)
  8. Ta form (25)
  9. Tara form (3)
  10. Tari form (2)

But there is a lot of similarity among those, and there are probably both more
and less inclusive lists.

