Is this a 仮定形 (kateikei) form, and how to analyse it? I'm stuck with the word **** in the following text below (towards the beginning of Japanese tale, _Kachikachi yama_ ). Obviously, "()" stands for "()" (to sit down). But what's the grammar behind ? Is it a (kateikei) ? I don't understand what's the grammatical construction. Any help would be appreciated ! * * * An old man wants to catch a mischievous tanuki, and ... > **** Translation from Tom Ray and Sachiko Matsubara, which was available during some years here. > Then, the next day, the tree stump where the raccoon had been sitting, had been prepared with a lot of tanglefoot. While the old man was sowing beans the raccoon approached, and sat on the tree stump : "if you sow a thousand seeds they become one seed, if you sow one seed it will completely rot", he begain to tease.

No, that's a _ren’yōkei_ A _ren’yōkei_ mid-sentence is for coordination, like English “he sat, **and** …”. You can think of it as a literary equivalent of

_Kateikei_ is what comes before _-ba_ , so in this case it would be _kake **re** -_. Full table, with sample context:

* - _kake-_ _(-nai)_
* - _kake-_ _(-masu)_
* _kake-ru_ _(yo.)_
* - _kake-ru-_ _(hito)_
* - _kake-re-_ _(-ba)_
* _kake-ro/kake-yo_ _(!)_



This is because _kakeru_ is a vowel-stem _(ichidan)_ verb. Perhaps you were thinking of consonant-stem _(godan)_ vebs, such as _kaku_. These have different vowels depending on the inflection:

* - _kak-a-_ _(-nai)_
* - _kak-i-_ _(-masu)_
* _kak-u_ _(yo.)_
* - _kak-u-_ _(hito)_
* - _kak-e-_ _(-ba)_
* _kak-e_ _(!)_



Notice the difference between and ****