My apologies if this topic was already talked about. I didn’t seem to find exactly what I was thinking, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Also, I wasn’t sure whether to register this as a bug/typo or as a question, but this is the second time I’ve noticed this, so here I am.
Like the title says, I had question about the difference between these two grammar examples.
Element 1 comes from そう.
Element 2 comes from an example phrase from せいで.
Here is the phrase in question:
犬の手術の事が心配なせいで今日は寝れなさそう。
Now, from my understanding, 寝れなさそう here is a verb.
The passive/potential form of 寝る, 寝れる. In negative, 寝れない.
Looking at the そう grammar point, I would be inclined to think that this would be like so: 寝れなそう, from 寝れない (ない removed) + な + そう.
However, as seen in the example phrase, there is an added さ between な and そう.
This makes it seemingly more akin to the そう negative form used for [い] and [な] adjectives, as in there is an added なさ + そう.
May I request some insight into why this is the way it is?
Note for Clarity
My brain blanked and went straight to い-adjectives when I wrote this! As James explained far better below, the standard usage with verbs in their negative is なそう, however it has become increasingly common to use なさそう, even with verbs in their negative.
Hey! Welcome to the forums!
When ～そうだ is used with ない, it’s a bit of a special case. Instead of dropping the い and adding そう (like you normally would with an adjective), ない is first turned into its noun-like form なさ, and then combined with そう.
̶S̶o̶,̶ ̶̶な̶さ̶そ̶う̶̶̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶r̶e̶c̶t̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶̶̶な̶そ̶う̶̶̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶a̶l̶.̶ The above would only be true for い adjectives in their negative form.
This same rule also applies to いい, which becomes よさそう.
Just to make sure I understand what you’re saying correctly, would that mean that the structure examples showed in the ‘Structure’ section of そう, in the Negative subsection, the verb and [い] adjective examples would be flipped in this particular case?
Here is a screenshot to illustrate:
Forgive me if my question is unclear, English is not exactly my first language.
勉強しなそう sounded really weird to me (I’ve never heard it before) so I asked a native speaker. She thought it sounded weird too.
Just stick to なさそう [i.e. 勉強しなさそう] for everything and you’ll be fine…
This does seem to contradict the lesson. I was taught early on to treat ない like an い-adjective when it came to conjugations, so it makes sense in this case that it would logically become なさそう rather than なそう。I don’t see how the “insert a は” rule would apply here.
It might also be easier if instead of subtracting ない and changing it, it was made more clear that what’s happening is you’re removing the い and replacing it with a さ (like you would if you were making a noun out of an い-adjective, ie 大きさ or 高さ). I feel like the way it’s written almost makes it look like you’re inserting a particle な and then a さ, rather than the more logical progression (for me, anyway) of さ is making ない work like a noun here.
There’s a lot going on in this thread so I will try to reply to each thing in turn.
The rules for when さ is inserted or not are actually a little more complex than our current writeup suggests. The “textbook rules” (for foreign learners and also for native 国語 textbooks) are as follows:
The short adjectives (形容詞) 良い and 無い have さ inserted due to phonetic reasons (良さそう・無さそう).
The negation of adjectives uses the short adjective 無い so さ is inserted in that case as well (e.g., 美味しく+ 無さそう).
The negation of verbs will not have さ inserted as they do not use the adjective 無い but the auxiliary verb ない, which looks similar but is technically different.
However, in practice many natives will insert さ in places which go against these “rules”. You can read more about this in this NHK article or there is some discussion in this 知恵袋 thread (may be region locked). Essentially, many natives will use さ with the negation of verbs despite it being “wrong”. As to when and why this happens, it gets a little more complex. The normal answer a native will give when pushed on this is that it makes things easier to say (in my experience this is especially true of shorter verbs). You may even come across natives insisting that the “wrong” version is the only acceptable version, but there is no universal rule on this which all native speakers follow even if there are certain tendencies with certain words.
The current structure section is correct. It shows the “textbook rules” for how this structure works.
As per the discussion above, 勉強しなそう is “correct” but some natives may find it unnatural and avoid it. You can find someone discussing this exact example here. In my experience しなさそう is far more common though. If you google this in Japanese you can find a crazy amount of hits of people discussing it and arguing about it.
On Bunpro we teach that the ない used with the negative of verbs is an auxiliary verb, not an adjective (please feel free to send feedback if you notice somewhere where we don’t do this!). It can conjugate like an adjective but the classification of the word is technically not an adjective. The classification doesn’t dictate the rules though. It is just a way of describing words to make it clear which words act in similar ways or not. For example, in this case the ない used with the negative of verbs and 無い (the adjective) do not act the same way.
You cannot insert は before the auxiliary verb ない but you can do it before the adjective 無い.
お金はない 〇 (adjective)
美味しくはない 〇 (adjective)
好きではない 〇 (adjective)
食べはない → 食べない 〇 (auxiliary verb)
I think you’re right here! The structure should look similar to how it does for the example with 良い.
Here さ is not being used to make a noun out of the adjective (you can see this as it is not added before そう when used with non-negated adjectives). さ is added purely for euphonic reasons (to make it sound nicer). This is why it is used with the very short adjectives 良い and 無い and also has a tendency to be used with shorter verbs.
This has brought up a lot of discussion so we’re going to discuss internally if we can make any changes to the writeup on そう to make things clearer (clearer than my rambling answers here anyway, I hope ).
→ 食べない 〇 (auxiliary verb)
).