上二段活用

Compound of 上 (kami, “upper”) +‎ 二段活用 (nidan katsuyō, “bigrade conjugation”).

Literally, 上二段 (kami nidan, “upper bigrade”) refers to how the inflected endings are located in the gojūon table. 上 (kami, “upper”) means the vowel イ (i), which is written above the vowel エ (e), the other inflection-related vowel. 二段 (nidan, “two grades”) means two vowels are involved, since each 段 (dan, “row”) of the table contains one vowel. Thus this can be understood as “two-voweled conjugation in i”.

• (Tokyo) かみにだんか​つよー [kàmí nídáń káꜜtsùyòò] (Nakadaka – [6])[1]
• IPA^(key): [ka̠mʲi ɲ̟idã̠ŋ ka̠t͡sɨᵝjo̞ː]

上(かみ)二(に)段(だん)活(かつ)用(よう) • (kami nidan katsuyō) ^{←かみにだんくわつよう (kaminidankwatuyou)?}

1. (Classical Japanese grammar) a verbal conjugation class which has the following inflections: -i/-i/-u/-uru/-ure/-i[yo]

The subscripts in the table above indicate differences in vowel class that were already being lost in Old Japanese. It remains unclear what those different vowel classes may have meant. See the Syllables section in the Wikipedia article on Old Japanese for more details.

• Verbs in this class are superseded in modern Japanese as intransitive 上一段活用 (kami ichidan katsuyō, “upper monograde conjugation”) verbs:

  起(お)く (oku) → 起(お)きる (okiru, “to rise”)

  落(お)つ (otsu) → 落(お)ちる (ochiru, “to fall”)

  老(お)ゆ (oyu) → 老(お)いる (oiru, “to age”)

• Some verbs in this class also make way into modern Japanese as transitive 五段活用 (godan katsyō, “quintigrade conjugation”):

  起(お)く (oku) → 起(お)こす (okosu, “to raise”)

  落(お)つ (otsu) → 落(お)とす (otosu, “to drop”)

• Category:Japanese kami nidan verbs