つ / ぬ / たり / り: Classical Perfect

If き and けり are the recollective past that retreated into poetry, this page covers the family that took over the language. Classical Japanese had four completion auxiliaries — つ, ぬ, たり, and り — expressing that an action is done or that its result persists. Two of them, つ and ぬ, split the labour by how something finishes: つ for what an agent does on purpose, ぬ for what simply happens. And one of them, たり, wore down over the centuries into modern た. So the headline of this page is startling but true: you already speak classical Japanese — every 食べた is a contracted classical perfect, and every 泣いたり笑ったり is the classical たり doing exactly what it did a thousand years ago.

つ — you finished it on purpose

つ marks deliberate, agentive completion: someone consciously carried the action through. It attaches to the 連用形（れんようけい）and conjugates on the 下二段（しもにだん）pattern (未然 て, 連用 て, 終止 つ, 連体 つる, 已然 つれ, 命令 てよ).

Because つ implies a willed action reaching its end, it often pairs with a following conjecture to mean "will surely": 〜てむ (て + む) and 〜つべし both add a note of confidence — "shall certainly."

ぬ — it happened by itself

ぬ marks spontaneous, natural completion: an event that arrives on its own, without a controlling agent. It attaches to the 連用形 and conjugates on the ナ変（なへん）pattern (未然 な, 連用 に, 終止 ぬ, 連体 ぬる, 已然 ぬれ, 命令 ね). Seasons turning, blossoms falling, night breaking, a feeling welling up — this is ぬ's territory.

Look at 秋来ぬ ("autumn has come") and おどろかれぬる ("I am startled into awareness") in that one famous poem — both are the spontaneous ぬ, marking things that befall the speaker rather than things the speaker does. This is the deep contrast with つ.

The ぬ trap: perfective ぬ vs. negative ぬ

Here is the single most important parsing skill in classical Japanese, and it hinges on ぬ. The negative auxiliary ず also has a 連体形 spelled ぬ (covered on the ず / ぬ / ざる page). So a bare 〜ぬ can mean the opposite of itself. The disambiguation is mechanical and reliable:

• Perfective ぬ attaches to the 連用形 → "has …ed"
• Negative ぬ attaches to the 未然形 → "does not …"

For the verb 来（く）the reading itself gives it away: 来（き）ぬ is completion, 来（こ）ぬ is negation. For other verbs, you check whether the stem before ぬ is the continuative or the irrealis.

This is exactly why the poetic phrase 果（は）てぬ夢（ゆめ） means "an endless dream," not "a dream that ended." Since 果つ is a 下二段 verb, its 未然形 and 連用形 are both 果て, so the form can't decide it — but the idiom's sense ("a dream with no end, forever unfulfilled") tells us the ぬ is the negative: 果て + ぬ = "does not end." A learner who assumes ぬ always means completion mistranslates the phrase into its opposite.

たり — the resulting state (and the ancestor of た)

たり is a fusion: て + あり ("having …, and being"). That etymology is its whole meaning — it expresses 存続（そんぞく, a continuing resultant state) and 完了（かんりょう, completion), essentially the classical equivalent of modern 〜ている / 〜てある. It attaches to the 連用形 and conjugates on the ラ変（らへん）pattern (未然 たら, 連用 たり, 終止 たり, 連体 たる, 已然 たれ, 命令 たれ).

And now the payoff. Over centuries, 連用形 + たり contracted through sound change into modern た: 書きたり → 書いたり → 書いた; 咲きたり → 咲いた. The past tense you learned in your first month of Japanese is this classical perfect, worn smooth.

The たり you still use out loud: 〜たり…たり

The clearest proof that たり is alive is the everyday 〜たり…たり pattern, in which two (or more) たり list representative, alternating actions — "…-ing and …-ing by turns." This is the classical 完了 たり, repeated for enumeration, sitting in ordinary N4-level speech.

泣いたり笑ったり isn't a "grammar point" you memorized in isolation — it's the classical perfective たり you inherited whole. Seeing that connection turns a rote pattern into something you understand.

り — completion on 四段 and サ変 only

り is the fussy member of the family: it attaches only to the 已然形 of 四段（よだん）verbs and the 未然形 of サ変（さへん）verbs. (A traditional mnemonic reads り as サ未四已 — "サ variable irrealis, 四段 realis.") Like たり it also derives from a fused 〜あり and means completion / persisting state. It conjugates ラ変-style (未然 ら, 連用 り, 終止 り, 連体 る, 已然 れ, 命令 れ).

咲けり ("has bloomed / is in bloom") is 咲く's realis 咲け plus り. In meaning it overlaps heavily with たり; the difference is purely which verb classes each one attaches to.

つつ — the continuative cousin

You will constantly see つつ near these auxiliaries, and it is worth pinning down. つつ is not the perfective つ; it is a 接続助詞（せつぞくじょし, conjunctive particle) meaning simultaneous or repeated action — "while doing," "continually." It attaches to the 連用形 and survives robustly in modern written Japanese in two shapes: 〜つつある ("in the (ongoing) process of," formal) and 〜つつも ("even while," concessive).

Why Japanese seems to have "two pasts"

Here is the distinguishing insight. Learners are puzzled that classical Japanese has both き/けり and つ/ぬ/たり/り, all glossed loosely as "past." The confusion dissolves once you split them by what they became:

• The completion family (つ・ぬ・たり・り) turned into living grammar everyone uses daily — modern past た, and the 〜たり…たり pattern.
• The recollective past (き・けり) never entered everyday grammar and survives only as poetic 〜し (ありし, 過ぎし) and elegiac set phrases.

So "the two classical pasts" aren't redundant rivals; they are two systems with opposite fates. Once you see that た descends from たり, you stop treating modern past tense as unrelated to the classical world — it is the classical world, still conjugating on your tongue.

Common mistakes

The perfective ぬ and the negative ぬ look identical. Judge by the stem: continuative before it = completion; irrealis before it = negation.

Key takeaways

• Four completion auxiliaries: つ (deliberate), ぬ (spontaneous), たり and り (resulting state) — all attach to the 連用形 (except り: 四段 已然/サ変 未然).
• つ vs ぬ = agency, not tense: 書きつ ("I wrote it") vs 散りぬ ("they fell, of themselves").
• The perfective ぬ vs negative ぬ trap is decided by the stem: continuative → "has …ed"; irrealis → "does not …." 果てぬ夢 is negative ("endless").
• Modern た is たり contracted, and everyday 〜たり…たり is the same classical perfect — you already speak this grammar.
• Splitting this completion family from the recollective き / けり explains why Japanese seems to have "two pasts": one became universal grammar, the other stayed poetic.