spontaneity; voluntary action
General noun for acting on one's own initiative, without external prompting. Often used in compounds like 自発的 (spontaneous) and 自発性 (spontaneity).
See also: 自発的
His spontaneous action was appreciated.
Thank you for helping voluntarily.
spontaneous passive
Linguistics term for a passive-like construction that implies something happens spontaneously or without an explicit agent. Common in Japanese grammar descriptions.
In Japanese, the spontaneous passive is expressed by attaching 'reru/rareru' to the irrealis form of a verb.
The teacher aims for an education that encourages students' initiative.
"Omowareru" is an expression that conveys a spontaneous passive meaning.
This company values its employees' initiative.
"Reru/rareru" is sometimes used as an auxiliary expressing spontaneous passive.
主体性 refers to the quality of thinking and acting as an independent agent, whereas 自発 focuses on the spontaneous, unprompted nature of a specific action.
Compound of 自 (self) and 発 (depart, emit), literally 'self-starting'. The linguistic sense is a calque from Western grammar terminology.