19096
I keep seeing these onomatopoeic adverbs popping up with the form: _っ_り. Some
examples include ぐっすり、ぴったり、すっきり、etc…. Is there a name for these adverbs, and
why are they in this specific form?
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2014-09-20T01:32:16.043
18729
2016-07-17T16:39:15.880
2014-09-20T06:37:05.367
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question
words etymology adverbs
_っ_り form adverbs
Since no-one else has tried to answer, I'll write up a few thoughts in the
hope of attracting a more knowledgeable person, Somebody Is Wrong On The
Internet style.

I do not think there is any single, universally accepted name for this form.
Sometimes you see the term "ri adverb" (in Japanese, "り副詞"), but this often
encompasses 3-mora adverbs too ( _yahari_ as well as _yappari_ ), so it is not
quite what you're after. Maybe "geminated ri adverb" would be it?

As for why they are in this specific form... I don't have an airtight theory
on this, but here are some thoughts.

  1. As far as I can tell these adverbs first started appearing in the latter half of the Late Middle Japanese period. (Muromachi period and after.)
  2. The vast majority of these adverbs are clearly related to mimetic roots that are attested much earlier, often in Old Japanese (e.g. _nikkori_ obviously has something to do with OJ _nikwoyaka_ ; _hissori_ must be related to OJ _pisoka_ ; etc.)
  3. In most cases, geminated forms (e.g. _yappari_ ) have earlier or at least roughly contemporaneous attestations than ungeminated forms (e.g. _yahari_ ).
  4. On the other hand, doubled forms (e.g. _nikoniko_ ) tend to appear a bit earlier, during Early Middle Japanese.
  5. If I recall my Frellesvig correctly, LMJ is exactly the stage when /Q/, the "geminate-the-following-consonant" phoneme became distinct from the phoneme he represents as /C/, which was expressed either as gemination or a moraic nasal depending entirely on context (his example I think was that in EMJ there could be no minimal pair like contemporary Japanese _shittai_ vs _shintai_ ).

Basically, it looks like this form of adverb arose during the LMJ period,
following the appearance of the doubled forms, as a new way to express mimetic
material adverbially using the new-to-Japanese gemination phoneme /Q/.

(Why should a new form have arisen? Was it systematically different in
semantics or usage patterns than the doubled forms? I don't know.)

Ungeminated versions apparently appeared shortly afterwards, possibly
originally as hypercorrections/backformations based on other word pairs with
phonemically similar profiles, e.g. _yoppodo_ and _yohodo_.

Accounting for the final _-ri_ is harder. It's worth noting that there are
also attested forms that don't include this, e.g. _nikko [to]_ , _ukkara [to]_
, apparently with little to no semantic differentiation, so apparently adding
_-ri_ was originally just one ending among several that combined with the
gemination.

It makes sense that the variants would be whittled away to one non-zero form,
since that helps identify each member of this word class as a member of the
class, but as for why _-ri_ should have been (a) a contender in the first
place, and (b) the final winner, I have only idle speculation. (e.g., consider
repeated usage of /r/ as a sort of "flavorless" consonant throughout the
history of Japanese morphology; consider lingering influence of forms like
/ari/ and /nari/; etc.)
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2014-10-15T04:20:41.270
19096
2014-10-15T08:03:41.120
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answer
To expand on Matt's answer somewhat, I have a dim memory of reading somewhere
that the final り in these adverbs is derived from classical あり (modern ある, _to
be_ ). Digging around in my sources at the moment, I cannot find where I read
this. That said, this functions here in many ways nearly identically to the
auxiliary verb (助動詞{じょどうし}) り, which is analyzed as an abbreviation of あり (see
the [Weblio](http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E3%82%8A) or
[Kotobank](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%8A-656986) entries; search the page
for 助動), and which is used to indicate 1) completion, 2) the result of an
action, or 3) an ongoing state. The last sense especially fits semantically
for these -り adverbs, which all seem to describe state.

In terms of the historical development of these terms, the basic trend over
time appears to be:

  * **Two-mora root**  
This is often still apparent in other existing words. For instance, the ひそ
root in modern ひっそり also appears in ひそか, ひそひそ, ひそむ, ひそまる, ひそめる, and ひそやか.

  * **Reduplication**  
Many, but not all, of the ‑り adverbs went through a reduplication phase. For
root ひそ, that would be ひそひそ.

  * **Gemination**  
I suspect this initially developed as a kind of fast, informal-speech, clipped
abbreviation. ひそひそ, for instance, is sometimes realized as ひそびそ even by some
modern speakers. This might have been realized like: `/hisobiso/` →
`*/hiso̥bi̥so/` → `/hisso/`

    * In fact, we find that almost all of the -り adverbs that include gemination also have a reduplicated form without the り: ひっそり has ひそひそ, にっこり has にこにこ, うっかり has うかうか. Sometimes the reduplicated version has different voicing: さっぱり has さばさば, しっかり has しかじか.
    * One geminated ‑り adverb that appears to break this mold is やっぱり. However, some digging shows that this apparent outlier does hew to the pattern -- after allowing for some semantic variation. やっぱり is most often used in modern Japanese to mean something like _"just as I thought, just as expected"_. It also has a less-well-known sense of _"quietly, steadily, gently"_. This is much closer to the putative root やは, cognate with the やわ in やわらかい _"soft, gentle"_ and also found in older Japanese as a standalone ‑な adjective meaning _"soft, gentle, mild; fragile"_. The `/h/` in modern やは would have been a `/p/` in older stages of the language, giving us a possible development like `/yapayapa/` → `*/yapyapa/` → `/yappa/`.
  * **Addition of the ‑り**  
Again, this seems to be the ‑り that came from あり. The suffix ‑り likely
developed first, and then was used for these adverbs. Use of あり itself would
usually imply forms like とあり or にあり on the end -- and these are known
historically to become たり and なり, which produces adjectives. Also, we cannot
find any textual evidence of forms like *ひっそあり, only ひっそり.

If you run across a geminated ‑り adverb, identify the root, and dig around in
a good Japanese dictionary to find the related terms. This can be a good way
to expand your vocabulary.
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answer