Morph Discontinuity and Intensive Morphemes

1. I mpressionistic adverbs . There are, in Japanese, a number of four-syllable words of the shapes - n̄ -́ ri and - q -́ ri. Syntactically, these words function as a subclass of nouns which also includes a large number of reduplicated and unreduplicated onomatopes. The typical position for these nouns is before the particle /to/ or some form of the verb su.ru ‘does’. They usually describe states, conditions, or impressions, and sound somewhat vague in English translation, although the meanings are quite specific in a given context of Japanese. The final syllable of these impressionistic adverbs , as they may be called, can be treated as a morpheme indicative of the class. Historically, the syllable ri is perhaps the verb-derivative suffix /r/ + the infinitive ending /i/. But descriptively there would be difficulties in accepting such an analysis, since for most words of this subclass we find no related forms of a verbal type.