noun
potential mood
Linguistic term for the grammatical mood expressing ability or possibility. In Japanese grammar, often refers to the potential form of verbs (e.g., 読める, 食べられる).
日本語の可能法は、動詞の語幹に「られる」などを付けて作ります。
The potential mood in Japanese is formed by attaching 'rareru' etc. to the verb stem.
Compound of 可能 (kanō, 'possible') + 法 (hō, 'mood, method'), a calque from Western grammatical terminology.