未然形

Etymology
Compound of. Historically called,.

Noun

 * 1)  a Japanese verbal inflectional category: the irrealis form
 * Indicates that something has not yet happened, or not yet begun.

Usage notes
This term is used in the traditional description of Japanese grammar. In Japanese Educational Grammar (日本語教育文法), this is called the as it is used before the suffix. In the western analysis of Japanese grammar, it is not an inflected form but a derived stem, called for example the "a- stem" in 's works. Some analyses such as John R. Bentley's A Descriptive Grammar Of Early Old Japanese Prose even do not posit such a stem at all, instead analyzing the a as part of the suffix (e.g. yuk-azu instead of yuka-zu).