That’s true. I guess each language has some sort of underlying logic that allows speakers to guess what new compounds mean, even if they don’t make much sense in real life or sound bizarre at first.
I think 速すぎる behaves like one word now, but yes, we could just as easily say it’s made up of two words that have each taken different forms. (Side note: not sure if ‘auxiliary verb’ is the right word, because ‘auxiliary verbs’ usually come with other verbs i.e. with a て-form in front of the auxiliary verb in Japanese. But… frankly, IDK what to call it. Just a verb? ) In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this construction started out as an attempt to combine two words. Thing is though, I can’t think of any other structure that requires an adjective stem. (I wouldn’t be surprised if one exists, but nothing comes to mind right now.) Maybe the idea was to treat the stem almost like a noun, so the basic meaning of the adjective would be ‘exceeded’? I’m not at all sure though. IDK much about Old Japanese.
That’s why I used the question mark. You could probably just about make an argument for it taking a zero copula or something but that’s definitely stretching it…It’s considered a 補助動詞, which seems to be a subcategory of auxiliary verbs though.
You can use it with verbs in the continuative form, like 言いすぎる. You’re right in that it’s a weird conjugation though. My guess is that the く just got swallowed over time (速くすぎる⇒速っすぎる⇒速すぎる seems like a natural transformation).
Oh, it is? I had no idea. I knew that you used the question mark because you weren’t certain, but I was just trying to say that I’m as clueless as you. Your post prompted me to do a bit of reading though: apparently, traditionally, 補助動詞 are the sort that come after て (like あげる), whereas 助動詞 are structures like ない or ます. I think that means すぎる should be a 助動詞… but I also found an academic paper referring to it as a 補助動詞. And yes, you’re right: すぎる works with the continuative form. I was just trying to think of another structure that requires that the adjective be transformed into an adjective stem.
By the way,
I agree that it seems natural, but the meanings of 速くすぎる and 速すぎる are too different. However, like I said though, the only other idea I have is that of treating the adjective stem almost like a noun. I mean, the continuative form of a verb is sometimes used as a noun as well. Not sure if there’s any way to find out how this structure came about, because I have no clue how to phrase a search query on this in Japanese.
I might be wrong, but I think that in 速く過ぎる the 過ぎる is the main verb and 速く is an adverb modifying it. In other words, the meaning is “to quickly exceed”.
In 速すぎる the すぎる is an auxiliary verb that modifies the adjective 速い、so the phrase means “too fast”.
Hahaha. I’m just as clueless about historical use. However, in modern use, 速くwould be the adverbial form of 速い, which means (with this kanji) ‘fast’ (as opposed to ‘early’). すぎる’s literal meaning is ‘to pass’ or ‘to go over’…
And… the rest is what @trunklayer said. He finished his explanation faster than I did. Hahaha. Just one thought though:
I’d say it’s almost as though we get a verb 速すぎる that means ‘to exceed “fast”’. That’s why we can conjugate 速すぎる. For instance, 速すぎた would be ‘it was too fast’.
Yeah, I’m still fine with there being identical syntactic forms that can be interpreted to mean different things. It wouldn’t be the first, it won’t be the last, and if anything it’s a strong motive to change one of the forms.
Hm. Good point. It could have started out as 速くすぎる before getting transformed into what we see now because they were too similar… well, we might find out at some point. Just a random fact though: in Old Japanese, い-adjectives had different forms from what we see today, so it might actually be based on some other form we hardly use now. If I’m not wrong, we would have had はやき before nouns, はやく before verbs, and はやし at the end of sentences. So yeah, well… who knows? Hahaha.
@Jonapedia
Thank you for your kind words. There is no need for an apology because I was not offended. I am happy that we have come to a mutual understanding.
) In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this construction started out as an attempt to combine two words. Thing is though, I can’t think of any other structure that requires an adjective stem. (I wouldn’t be surprised if one exists, but nothing comes to mind right now.) Maybe the idea was to treat the stem almost like a noun, so the basic meaning of the adjective would be ‘exceeded’? I’m not at all sure though. IDK much about Old Japanese.