What is a citation form? A citation form is a representation of a word which captures the grammatical information of that word, and goes a long way towards enabling us to use the word in context.

For example:

An English "citation form"

(1) gives the minimum grammatical information about a word or expression in a small space
(2) without using Japanese
(3) without using codes
(4) while preserving the natural order of the English
(5) while at the same time giving learners enough information to build new sentences.

The following are not examples of citation forms:

apple
bread
give
happy
quickly
unbearable

The reason that they are not citation forms is that they contain no grammatical information.

Neither are the following citation forms:

apple (C)
bread (U)
give 物　to 人
give DO to IO

They are not citation forms because, although they do give grammatical information, they contain code (eg, (C), DO), or they contain Japanese. Furthermore, in the case of "apple" and "bread" the natural order of English is lost.

By this I mean that the main grammatical point of these words (an apple, some bread) is what comes before the word. However, the main grammatical information, given in code ((C), (U)), is given after the word.

The following are examples of citation forms:

an apple
some bread
to give something to someone
a happy woman
to run quickly
an unbearable situation

The citation form is the key that opens the door to the language. If you are trying to learn English by "memorizing words", you will probably never learn to speak and write English to a reasonable level. In fact, you will be wasting your time.

As said in the previous Column, the citation form is the key that opens the door to the language.

Most importantly, the citation form allows us to build English. The following are just a silly mixture of English, and Japanese, and code:

give 物 to 人
give DO to IO

The following is a proper citation form:

to give something to someone

This enables us to build new, and natural, English sentences, like this:

to give something to someone
　> to give a present to someone
　　> I gave a present to John
　　　> I gave a Christmas present to John, etc.

If you hold up an apple to a class of Japanese learners of English (let us say high school or university students), and say, "What is this?", almost all of them will say, "Apple". After many years of learning English, they still cannot say "An apple".

They have spent all these years learning "apple = りんご", but have not learnt even the most basic grammar of the word "apple".

If this were not true, it would be unbelievable!

The problem is that almost everyone thinks that learning a language is the same as learning words ("apple = りんご"; "quickly = 早く", etc.) . This is completely wrong.

If you want to learn a language, do not learn the word. What you should learn is what comes before and after the word you are learning.

Do not learn "bread", but learn the following:

some bread
a slice of bread
some bread and butter
a slice of bread with some butter

When you can do this, you will start learning English.

For some reason, this is a disease which seems to be spreading at great speed.

I often come across sentences like this:

（×）We go there everyday.

This is similar to writing:

（×）We go there everymorning.
（×）I have a bath everyevening.

No one writes the latter, but everyone seems to be writing the former!

One reason is that "every + day" can be used as a one-word adjective, as in:

an everyday occurrence
an everyday experience

However, when it is not an adjective, it should be written as two words, just as we write "my + pen" as two words. No one would think of writing "mypen"!

I think that another reason for writing "everyday" for "every day" is the influence of words like "everyone", "everywhere", etc. These are correct and look natural. Likewise "everyday", even when used incorrectly, looks natural.

Some people write "all + right" as one word, as in:

Are you alright? (instead of "all right")

This is perhaps just acceptable. However, （×）"We go there everyday" is definitely wrong.

It is very common to use nouns as verbs in English. When we say, "Consumers boycotted the shop", most people are probably not aware that the verb "boycott" comes from a noun -- actually the family name "Boycott".

Likewise, although it is rather formal English, we can say "I breakfasted at nine", or "I lunched at one".

Here are some other examples of nouns which have become verbs:

to author a book（本を著す）
to host a party（パーティで主人役を務める）
to chair a meeting（会議の司会［議長］をする）
to xerox a page（ページをコピーする）
to fax the information（情報をファクスする）
to action your request (to take action regarding your request)
（リクエストに応える）
to parent (as in "parenting is hard work" = being a parent)
（親となる）

When a noun starts being used as a verb, at first this seems rather strange. But after a while, people tend to get used to it. So these days it sounds rather natural (or is starting to sound natural) to say, "I could not access your site", "I will reference that point", "I will message you". And certainly, no one would can complain when "e-mail" is used as a verb.

The speedy development of modern technology means that we need many new verbs.

These days we say things like:

I bookmarked the page.
（（インターネットの）そのページをブックマークした［お気に入りに登録した］）
I will google that word.（その単語をグーグルで検索する［ググる］）
I will text-message you.（文書で連絡しましょう）
We are going to microchip our dog.
（うちの犬にマイクロチップをつけるつもりだ）