Archaic "Keri" Origins


I read that "Keri" is a verb suffix used to denote the realization of
something, and is also poetic- I was wondering if anyone knew where it came
from, kanji etc. For more context it was used with ari- like otoko arikeri. I
think it was meant to mean "there was a man."




Just doing a quick survey of the kanji spellings used for けり in the first five
books of the
[_Man'yōshū_](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajti.lib.virginia.edu%2Fjapanese%2Fmanyoshu%2F+%E3%81%91%E3%82%8A),
after excluding false positives (matches for けり belonging to _-ku_ verbs),
here's the breakdown for spellings by frequency and 甲類【こうるい】 ( _ke 1_) vs.
乙類【おつるい】 ( _ke 2_):

  * 来: 21 -- N/A, non-phonetic use
  * 家里: 11 -- _ke 1ri_
  * 家利: 5 -- _ke 1ri_
  * 家理: 2 -- _ke 1ri_
  * 鶏里: 2 -- _ke 1ri_
  * 計理: 1 -- _ke 1ri_
  * 有: 1 -- N/A, non-phonetic use

Though the kanji used as man'yōgana vary, the readings are consistently of the
甲類 variety. As noted in Shibatani's _The Languages of Japan_ starting from
around [page 134](http://books.google.com/books?id=sD-
MFTUiPYgC&lpg=PA134&vq=particle%20i&pg=PA134#v=snippet&q=particle%20i&f=false),
some scholars view the 甲類 variant _e 1_ as arising from _i_ + _a_ , consistent
with the previously mentioned theories that _keri_ derives from _ki_ + _ari_.

Shogakukan's _Kokugo Dai Jiten Dictionary_ (their title in the copyright
notice, though the "dictionary" is redundant) explains the origins of _keri_
as:

> 回想の助動詞「き」と「有り」、または「来（き）」と「有り」の結合したもの  
>  A fusion of past recollective auxiliary verb き and 有り, or of 来 ( _ki_ ) and
> 有り

As @DariusJahandarie noted, the past recollective き has no 連用形{れんようけい}, so き +
[verb] is unlikely. I've poked around in a few dictionaries now, and nowhere
can I find any mention that き might have been irregular in this way (i.e. that
it might have allowed for the 終止形{しゅうしけい} of き to attach to another following
verb). Likewise, I can find no mention that 有り could be preceded in verb
compounds with anything other than the 連用形, which apparently rules out the
possibility of [verb in 終止形] + 有り.

Given also the prevalence of spelling けり with 来 in what appears to be a
conceptual as opposed to phonetic way, it seems most likely that けり derives
from 来{き} + 有{あ}り.

That said, human language is nothing if not wonderfully exceptional, so past
recollective き + 有り remains a potentially viable hypothesis despite the
unlikely grammatical construction, and in some ways this seems to be the
better semantic match.

