Irregular nu verbs

[benkasminbullock]

I'm doing some work on my verb inflection script at

www.sljfaq.org/cgi/verb-inflect.cgi

This uses a list of verbs extracted from JMdict, and I was trying to overhaul the parsing software from sixteen years ago when I noticed the following.

In JMdict.xml, we find <pos>&v5n</pos> marking all verbs which end with -nu such as "shinu" and a few other bits and bobs. There is also a part of speech (<pos>&vn;</pos>) for "irregular nu verbs". This tag is used to mark shinu but not 焼け死ぬ for example:

<keb>死ぬ</keb>
...
<pos>&v5n;</pos>
<pos>&vn;</pos>

<keb>焼け死ぬ</keb>
...
<pos>&v5n;</pos>
<pos>&vi;</pos>

I don't know what is irregular about shinu compared to other verbs ending in nu, and it seems odd that even other versions of shinu don't have the &vn;:

<keb>凍え死ぬ</keb>
...
<pos>&v5n;</pos>
<pos>&vi;</pos>

<keb>４ぬ</keb>
...
<pos>&v5n;</pos>
<pos>&vi;</pos>

I have looked for some documentation by searching this mailing list for "irregular nu verb" and by looking at 

https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/edhelp.py?svc=jmdict&sid=#kw_pos

but I could not see very much description.

[Jim Breen]

Thanks for raising this topic, Ben.

I'd totally forgotten why we had a "vn" POS tag. On checking back I
see it was introduced in 2007 on Rene Malenfant's suggestion to
indicate the archaic nature of 往ぬ/去ぬ, and is really only used for that
entry and 死ぬ/干死ぬ. All of these also have v5n tags. In fact, apart from
往ぬ/去ぬ, all the v5n entries are related to 死ぬ.

I think it's confusing to have both vn and v5n on entries. I think we
can safely remove it. It can stay on the ぬ entry, which is actually
archaic.

Jim

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Jim Breen
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[Ben Bullock]

On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 at 08:40, Jim Breen <jimb...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'd totally forgotten why we had a "vn" POS tag. On checking back I
see it was introduced in 2007 on Rene Malenfant's suggestion to
indicate the archaic nature of 往ぬ/去ぬ, and is really only used for that
entry and 死ぬ/干死ぬ. All of these also have v5n tags. In fact, apart from
往ぬ/去ぬ, all the v5n entries are related to 死ぬ.

It was hard to understand what an irregular nu verb was, since there are only a few verbs ending in nu, and all of them seem to have the same conjugation, and so I couldn't understand the regular/irregular division. 

I think it's confusing to have both vn and v5n on entries. I think we
can safely remove it. It can stay on the ぬ entry, which is actually
archaic.

It looks like something which should be either carefully documented or removed.