Talk:らしい

Inflection note

@Huhu9001, curious about the note you added about inflection. The example sentence just above that uses the plain form as the terminal, which seems to disagree with the note that says it's the polite terminal らしいです (rashii desu) that should be used instead.

Could you have a look and clarify? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

• @Huhu9001, thanks for having a go at it.

Re: this change, the inflection table calls らしく (rashiku) the "adverbial", and らしくて (rashikute) the "conjunctive". I'm concerned about the potential for confusing our readers. Do you have any ideas how to better clarify this? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:00, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I do note instances of usage like google:"ないらしく見える", which appear to be this same particle らしい used adverbially. Not sure how to account for this. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:06, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I think that's because 見える is an opinion verb that takes a clause in the adverbial form. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 22:16, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Separately, I do see not a few instances of constructions like なかったらしかった, where the らしい must be the particle, but where both it and the preceding predicate are conjugated for tense.

I found this related Chiebukuro post, where the top answer explains that this construction is fine in modern Japanese, and that it has been in use since before WWII.

There are also tons of hits for ないらしかった, where again the らしい must be the particle, but where it is conjugated for tense and the preceding predicate is not.

I don't think that we can state so authoritatively that the particle's conjugated forms are as restricted as we currently describe. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:44, 25 March 2021 (UTC)