_っ_り form adverbs


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?




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.)




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.)

