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I just started trying to read the Japanese translation of Hermann Hesse's
_Siddhartha_. I've struck a problem in the first sentence that my native
Japanese speaking friends can't seem to help me with.

> ... その友でバラモンの子なるゴーヴィンダ（典尊）とともに、生い立った。

Both the English Wiktionary and WWWJDIC say 生{お}い立{た}ち is a noun.

As far as I can tell, ～った is the plain past ending, as in わかった "(I)
understood".

What am I missing? Is it something to do with this noun 生い立ち not really being
a noun but rather some special kind of noun phrase compound made of two verbs
(maybe even another 連用形?) that has a meaning as a compound but can still have
verbal inflections on the second part?

At least this is the best theory after going over it a few times with a local
friend and searching the web. It confuses Google Translate just as much as it
confuses me (-:

Before this my previous best theory was much more convoluted based on nouns
and -na adjectives being basically the same so this noun becoming a past tense
-na adjective - but that idea just seemed too crazy!
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2014-04-04T18:06:51.850
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2014-04-06T08:25:38.160
125
question
grammar conjugations nouns renyōkei parsing
～った with a noun (生い立ち > 生い立った) - what's really going on?
My Japanese dictionaries (岩波国語辞典 and 小学館現代国語例解辞典) both have an entry for 生い立ち
but not for 生い立つ, and my 古語辞典(角川 and 旺文社) both have an entry for おひたつ but not
for おひたち. So I think 生い立ち came from おひたつ, and maybe おひたつ/生い立つ is now almost
obsolete? Because I have never seen it used as a verb.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-05T06:54:24.780
15252
2014-04-05T06:54:24.780
15238
answer