に particle marking direction or Adverbial?

Japanese
#1

I often find the に particle to be something I come back to and have a bit of confusion on at times, and I find myself asking is this marking this as an adverb or as a goal/destination in an abstract sense?

いい加減にしろ - This seems to be a tough one in general, but my understanding is that かげん is a degree or extent of ones behavior in this case and しろ is a command to do so it is saying “Do to a reasonable degree!” so it ends up saying to cut out doing something that isn’t reasonable and start behaving in a reasonable fashion. But is this using に as a particle marking an abstract end goal or is it に making the "いい加減” Adverbial to the しろ?

おまけに - Is this expressing “losing TO that” marking an end point in an abstract sense or saying “Losingly ~~ B” or however you would choose to adverbialize it in English?

にする - Is this saying you are deciding on something because “I will be doing in a A like fashion” or that “I will be doing that which is A”?

Some are easier than others obviously and I think for the most part they aren’t hard but in cases like these I don’t really know and it often lowers my confidence in reading. I’m imagining the answer for more common ones are as follows:

Adverbial
ように
そんなに
に見える

Directional/Endpoint
他に
に気が付く
それに

If you have any help you think you can provide on specific points or even just corrections where I am wrong I would greatly appreciate it!

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#2

I started writing a long-winded explanation, only realizing by the end that I missed the whole point of your post. It’s an interesting topic to think about if you’re interested in the linguistic side of things, but since you said it “lowers my confidence in reading”…

So first things first. Can you give me a concrete example where not knowing the exact grammatical definition of に is actually giving you trouble?

I have a hunch that you’re trying to transliterate the expressions to English. For example, おまけに is a set expression. おまけ means extra (like a freebie you get at a shop, or an extra few pages of a manga at the end of a collected volume), etymology here. In modern Japanese, no one thinks about losing when using that expression. The same way you don’t actually think of scissors when you say “Cut it out!”

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#3

I don’t know about the OP actual interest, but I would like a in depth explanation of this specific point in terms of linguistics. I’m trying to have a extensive comprehension of the grammar, as it really helps specially when analyzing hard sentences (in intensive reading, most of the time).

The same way you don’t actually think of scissors when you say “Cut it out!”

When I first learned the ~てくる point, I noticed that the super common expression 行って来ます makes a shit ton of sense to say when leaving the house, and I was kinda blown away by it. I don’t think of “行って + 来ます” or “Going and returning” whenever I see this expression, but having noticed it strengthens my comprehension of the language and specially keeps my enthusiasm and interest going!

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#4

The reason I mentioned the “losing to” for おまけに is not from my own viewpoint I remember having a resource that described it as that, I can’t remember where it was from though so I suppose I had ingrained that into my thought and maybe I shouldn’t have.

I want to be clear I am entirely okay with being wrong or misguided on anything I truly just want to learn and be better with Japanese.

I am not entirely sure what you mean when you say an example of giving me trouble, I can always just use common sense to guess at what it’s saying based on context, but that isn’t actually reading, It’s like showing a child a dog eating and asking them what the book says the dog is doing, they will of course then be able to read it, but not through true reading comprehension. I feel this is the same just at a higher level.

I also feel this argument of it being fine either way if you can figure out is no different from おまけに either, if I say it means “losing to A, B” I think this would mean very similarly to “what’s more” as both imply both a and b are negative or positive, but A is even more so that way, B is just extra on top. So I feel these two points sort of contradict each other when saying which に it is doesn’t matter but the way of thinking of おまけに does.

I am really happy you guys will take the time to answer my prompts and do not mean to sound argumentative at all if I do I apologize. I do think I did a poor job at giving any clear problems that I wanted an answer to. To be more clear I have two direct questions

  1. In my 3 examples. いい加減にしろ, おまけに and にする do you believe the に in these is functioning adverbially or as a target?

  2. Is there another overarching use of に you think of besides the very broad end points/target or use adverbially (I believe it used to be used as “and” as well but I mean modern usages)

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#5

I think you misunderstood my question. I wasn’t saying it’s fine either way - it’s obviously* one or the other. But specifically, the examples you listed have meanings that you can’t just derive from their parts.

いい加減にしろ/しなさい as it is, a set expression. You cannot change parts of it and still make sense. 悪い加減にしろ is not a thing. いい程度にしろ also doesn’t make sense. It also does not just mean that “Do this thing to a reasonable degree”, it’s specifically an expression that you say when you’re annoyed with someone. This meaning doesn’t come from any of it’s grammar components, but from actual usage.

Same with おまけに. おまけ by itself is a positive thing, but by attaching に, suddenly it can be either positive or negative. You still have to look up the expression / grammar point in a dictionary to be able it use it correctly, that’s why bunpro has a dedicated grammar point to it: おまけに (JLPT N2) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained

If it helps your recall, etymology can be helpful, sure. Just like @imsamuka said, it’s really nice to know that いってきます is actually 行って+ 来ます. But there’s nothing inherent in the grammar that makes it a stock phrase. If you only know 行く and 来る, you still won’t know that you say いってきます when you leave home. Just like how いい加減にしろ is something you only say when you’re angry at someone.

Having said all that…

*But as always, life is not that simple.

Let’s take a simple verb, なる:

  • 大学生になる - To become a university student. It would be silly to call 大学生に an adverb, unless you want to redefine what “adverb” means.
  • 高くなる - To become tall(er) / (more) expensive. Even though it’s not translated that way, grammatically 高く is an adverb, what else would it be?

So in 綺麗になる, is に the target particle, or the adverb making particle? Is there even a difference? You tell me.

Or take it a step further (not directly related to に):

  • 早くなる - to become faster/earlier (e.g. a rescheduled meeting) - 早く does not refer to the speed of なる
  • Unless 早く大人になりたい - I want to grow up fast. - 早く suddenly does refer to the speed of なる, even though the grammar itself hasn’t changed.

Same with みえる:

  • アイスクリームにみえる
  • 軽くみえる
  • both seem to be fine, so :man_shrugging:

I’m not a linguist, so I won’t be able to answer this question, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the English and Japanese linguistic terms just don’t line up neatly.

For completeness sake, wikipedia lists に as the dative case marker particle / 与格の格助詞

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#6

I found an example I think may be of more use to show my confusion.

驚きに目を見開く

Now with this example, I have seen translation tools say “Open one’s eyes in surprise.”"

This can be interpreted very differently depending on if its a target or adverbial.

Adverbially is “Opened their eyes in a surprising manner”

But as a target it would make more sense to me to be “Opened their eyes out of surprise”

The Former would be describing the person who is watching the person open their eyes “surprise” the latter would be describing the surprise of the eye opener themselves. If I encountered this on my own I would have absolutely no idea if this surprise is describing the doer’s action being thought of as surprising to the speaker or describing the target of the doer’s action of being reacting to a surprise they themselves are experiencing. In a similar way to “opened their eyes in a surprising manner”(adverbial) or “opened their eyes out of surprise” (target). Who is the surprise happening to? The person opening their eyes, or the person watching the doer open their eyes? In English we can see this flips entirely based on which way you say it. So understanding which に is occurring here totally changes what’s being said I believe.

I realize this may be super confusing especially written down like this so I apologize, but I hope you guys can be understanding and read it through lol.

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#7

Plenty of it is perspective, I fully acknowledge that, as I can see with おまけに as I would imagine it stems from 負ける and I didn’t have any trouble viewing that as being possible for both positive and negative combinations in my head, but maybe to others that doesn’t add up. I view my way of thinking of it as being identical in meaning to yours and bunpros just said differently. But I understand your point about not over-forcing the etymology, I genuinely can’t seem to find the resource that explained it that way either.

I greatly appreciate you taking the time to answer, as I said I simply want to understand better and am happy to be shown where I am wrong or to learn another way of thinking about things.

I think I did a poor job at explaining what I do and don’t understand. I probably came off as being someone who is going to take everything too literally. I fully understand what you’re saying about set expressions, and with “cut it out” but I am more saying that often set expressions can be brought back to their origin to help actually learn. Like cut it out is a set expression, however it isn’t without its own logic, we can clearly see how to cut something out is to remove it to therefore stop one’s actions. I am not claiming we would think of it that way as English speakers, but I don’t think its just a random thing we say without any logic to it for a foreigner to learn, there can be a logical way to think about it, and often I find for myself this is an easier way for me to remember things.

From reading through your longer answer here, I think generally speaking it seems most instances where something is a na-adjective or can be in Jisho it is typically being used adverbial (not always) in my ones I’m confused about. I think certain words confuse me because I had been viewing them as a plain noun, when actually they can be used adverbial like 秘密にしてる, which was one that I wasn’t sure of, but I am guessing now it is “to do secretly”

I think your parts about きれいになる make sense, I suppose though when I encounter a sentence and I am unsure which it is, it doesn’t stop me from feeling any less inadequate with the language that I can’t even diagnose which use of the particle is happening, even if I fully acknowledge your point that in that instance and in many others it plays little difference in the end result. It definitely makes me think I will have trouble building my own sentences and understanding structure when I can’t do something like figure out the proper usage of the particle.

I really appreciate you spending the time to answer my questions directly and trying to figure what I am saying even when I phrase it poorly, it is a big help to me and I will continue reviewing your answers.

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#8

I’m not sure I follow. This model (splitting directional and adverbial uses of に) can be useful of course, but like all models it has its limits. Why should we fundamentally decide that 他に is directional and not adverbial? I think you could interpret it as either “in the rest” (directional) or “besides” (adverbial). This isn’t immediately obvious because English doesn’t have an adverb like “otherly” that would map exactly to the Japanese grammar, but it could. The fact that “otherly” doesn’t exist in English doesn’t mean we can’t think of 他に as an adverb in Japanese.

Similarly おまけに, as you point out, can also be interpreted either way with pretty much the same meaning. It’s either “in a losing manner” or “in the losing”. What’s the difference, fundamentally?

In English you always lose to someone, you can’t lose “someonely”, but that’s English. I guess the real question would be whether a Japanese person would really think of these different uses of に (adverbial or dative/indirect object) as fundamentally different. I’m not sure they would.

Beyond that some of the examples that you use are just set idioms and expressions whose meaning is not just the sum of their parts. You can interpret English “maybe” as “may + be”, but in the end you’re better off just learning “maybe” as a single word with a singular meaning that’s not exactly the same as “may be”. Similarly ように’s meaning is not exactly what you’d expect from よう + に.

#9

I want to be clear I am not saying the way I split them is correct, its just my guesses at how those more common uses were split or how I was thinking of them. I think 他に could be either depending on the circumstance now that I think of it harder. I was thinking as ほか meaning another, and as a specific thing that is different or other, but you can definitely use 他 adverbially and not simply as I was thinking of it when making those lists. I was referring specifically to ほかに(も)・ほか(に)は (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained which I should have said explicitly since in their description they say " Basically, 他ほか by itself just means ‘another’, or ‘other’. に highlights 他ほか ‘another thing’ as being the target of what comes next in any particular sentence." And they claim it is the target marking に for this grammar point. But I do think there are other ways to use it that are presumably adverbial.

Much of the way I have learned has come from Cure Dolly’s videos and she seemingly pushes a very different line of logic than a lot of the responses I read on here, she often very much pushes understanding the core parts of a phrase or even idiom to actually get to the core logic of Japanese like with かもしれない and also ように and many others. I suppose it could just be preference of what one finds easier to help them individually, I often find myself very uncomfortable with learning things as set expressions and makes me feel like I am simply memorizing facts about Japanese and not actually learning Japanese. Much like memorizing your times tables is much different than knowing how to do multiplication. They usually go together sure, but if you were to literally just memorize them, you wouldn’t have learned multiplication per se.

I understand this is a very rigid example, and doesn’t completely overlap with the nuance of learning a language, its just the best way I could think of to lay out my point.

I guess I just find it surprising that other’s do not look at it and ask “Which function of the に particle is occurring here” when trying to learn, to me it is just my natural response to want to breakdown and understand a sentence. Maybe I am not looking at it correctly as it seems others do not have this reaction to my examples but tend to lean more towards it being weird that I am thinking of it this way. Maybe adverbially and target based sentences are more similar than I had been thinking of them and it leads to this confusion on my side.

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#10

And I’m not saying that you are incorrect, as I said, those are just models and “the map isn’t the territory”.

It’s funny that you bring up Cure Dolly because I actually enjoy her content quite a bit and I find that her approach makes more sense to me than “conventional” grammars, but one thing that always rubs me the wrong way is her claims that hers is the one true way and others are wrong, for instance in how she explains は and が or です and だ etc…

In the end all these models are just crutches we use until we reach fluency. A model is only as good as long as it’s useful, if it gets in the way then it should be dismissed.

If the adverb/direction distinction for に is useful then great. If it creates confusion it should be dropped in favour or something else, or applied sparingly.

I absolutely do that all the time and I think it’s super useful to both understand and memorize these constructs, but at some point you also have to accept that there’s an idiomatic way to use these things that doesn’t precisely conform to the “etymological” meaning of these expressions.

Imagine learning English and encountering the English future “I will do something” for the first time. You could break it down by explaining the meaning of “to will” in isolation, expressing volition, and how it came to mean the future. This is etymologically correct (I believe), and it can be useful in order to memorize this construct in the first place, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it doesn’t really give any insight into how a native speaker think of a sentence like “I will die one day” which has nothing to do with volition.

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#11

I agree that understanding where something comes from is just a piece of the puzzle and shouldn’t stop you from reaching the actual colloquial usage of a term, I suppose it has been so helpful for me in other cases that I may overleverage it in other cases where trying to emphasize the colloquial usage of the term could be more helpful than hyper-focusing on the original line of logic it came from. Having a more flexible viewpoint is what I probably have to adopt.

I may just be interpreting this to literal again haha, but are there other ways to view it? I often find this is my problem where I don’t know where else to find another model of a distinct way of thinking about it. Even my core question in this thread seems a little odd to most who are answering, however at the same time no one explicitly disagrees that the two broad usages are directional and adverbial, no? It may just be unfair of me to ask for strict agreement or disagreement as maybe it’s not as straight forward as that in the mind of learners who are past me.

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#12

I mean, I feel the same way, that’s perfectly normal I think when you learn a foreign language. But at some point I think you just have to embrace the ambiguity or abstraction and accept that it’ll just become natural, not by finding more and more intricate models but just by using the language enough so that it becomes more intuitive. When you’re fluent in a language you don’t think about adverbs and particles.

It’s like training wheels on a bike, they’re super useful early on but eventually they slow you down and hamper progress. Clearly you understand what ように and 他に and お負けに mean in an abstract way, right? If so, why insist on putting these expressions in well-labeled boxes, moreover well-labeled English boxes?

I think maybe what helps me here is that I use English to learn Japanese, but English isn’t my mother tongue. As such not being able to map things nicely into English grammar is not that significant for me, for the same reason that you don’t care about mapping Japanese grammar to the Russian case system for instance. It’s a just a crutch that I can discard when I feel that it’s getting in the way.

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#13

Why not both?

In English when we say:
“She goes to the store.”

The to in this sentence marks directions, as most prepositions do, but in one interpretation “to the store” is an adverbial phrase that modifies the nature of goes.

I think it’s similar in Japanese. I often think about this topic a lot, thanks for sparking the discussion.

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#14

Assuming they have grammar classes, do anyone know what’s the actual rationale used to explain (both?) に’s to native Japanese kids? Of course they have their own language intuition already, so explanations probably only need to exist to fill the gaps in this assumed pre-existing intuition, but they could still be useful for us to understand it… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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#15

Uhm… yeah. You might be missing a more fundamental piece of grammar here which I assumed you knew. に makes adverbs from な adjectives. 驚き is not a な-adj., so 驚きに doesn’t mean “in a surprising manner”. 秘密 is both a noun and a な-adj, so 秘密に can mean “secretly”.

Emphasis my own, because I start to feel like this is the core of the problem, and not the actual grammar point.

Not being able to use a piece of grammar 100% properly in a language that you’re still learning is not inadequacy, it’s normal. Even if it’s something as simple (/s) as the に particle. Japanese people have problems with English definite/indefinite articles (the/a/an), because the Japanese language just doesn’t have the concept. It seems like a simple grammar point at first (I mean, it’s in almost every English sentence, how hard could it be?), but it’s not.

I sometimes do it when a sentence is overly long and complex. But I don’t have a “functions of に” in my mind that I try to pattern match into every sentence I find. The fact that 綺麗に走る and 妹にケーキをあげる both use に doesn’t even register, since neither “running to beautiful” (goal/destination に) nor “I’ll a give a cake sister-ly” (adverb making に) make any sense.

Analyzing every single particle, every single piece of grammar this way would be insanely slow. Does this は hide a が or a を? Is this で the location marker, does it mean with/by, or is it the て form of だ? Is this が the subject marker or the formal “but”? You’ll have to do it by intuition eventually, the earlier the better.

Of course, just like @simias, I’m not a native English speaker, I have the previous experience of learning English as a second language, so I already knew from the beginning that reading and listening a lot is way more important and effective than trying to cram maximally detailed grammar rules.

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#16

Here is a basic summary (in Japanese, for Japanese school kids) which I suggest reading. It uses a fair amount of specific technical grammar words so on the assumption some people can’t comfortably read it I will provide a summary and some comments below in English.

There are five different distinct uses of に

  1. The inflectional ending of “な-adjectives” (形容動詞). Strictly speaking this is an inflection of the copula だ but in the 国語 system of organising words the copula is considered part of the word. E.g., 綺麗な becomes 綺麗に (な and に both being inflections of だ).

  2. As part of an adverb (副詞). This usage cannot be replaced by な or だ and thus it is clearly identifiable as being part of an adverb. E.g., ついに.

  3. As part of an inflecting bound auxillary word ( 助動詞). This is specifically talking about ようだ and そうだ. This is, as with one, actually an inflection of the copula だ however it is considered part of the word in the 国語 system of grammar. E.g., ようだ

  4. The case marking particle (格助詞). This marks the dative case or the indirect object or whatever. There are a lot of ways to think about this particle so pick whichever you like. E.g., 誰々に

  5. As part of the conjunction particle ( 接続助詞) のに. This is just the nominaliser の plus the case marking particle に so, again, this is just different due to how the 国語 system groups words.

例文：
【Ａ】風が さわやかに 吹く。

【Ｂ】ただちに 始める。

【Ｃ】おいしそうに 食べる。

【Ｄ】庭に 花を 植える。

【Ｅ】眠いのに、眠れない。

As you can see you could probably group some of these together depending on what you personally define as a word or how you personally think about grammar. Also if you follow the etymology I believe all these forms are connected anyway (not entirely sure so please check that before quoting me on it). I would suggest just paying attention to usage in context - it normally is not vague at all. On top of all this, native dictionaries suggest further/different ways of classifying に and you can probably go round in circles for the rest of your mortal life trying to work out exactly what it is and what it does. From the perspective of learning the language though, you seem to have the rough idea so go and see it in context and your question will probably dissolve. Good luck.

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#17

I won’t get too deep into this, but in short, yes. I also hold this view firmly. Basically all particles can be drawn back to having one kind of ‘underlying meaning’. Some of them do require some mental acrobatics, but it’s really more just about letting go of the way you want to say something in English and letting Japanese be its own thing.

In the case of に, I basically always just think of it as the location within which a verb action is happening. The ‘location’ is a lot broader than English, but really they are the same. It’s just a static place where some action is occuring.

【Ａ】風が さわやかに 吹く。 In freshness the wind is -blowing- (Similar to the more old-fashioned ‘In haste I ran’ type construction in English)

【Ｂ】ただちに 始める。 It will -start- -in- a moment.

【Ｃ】おいしそうに 食べる。To -eat- -in- a way that seems tasty.

【Ｄ】庭に 花を 植える。 To -plant- flowers -in- the garden.

【Ｅ】眠いのに、眠れない。-In- my tiredness, I cannot -sleep-.

Whether thinking about Japanese this way makes the language easier or harder for you though is a person to person thing I think :man_shrugging:.

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#18

I often use chat engines to help or I ask questions on hiinative and other places, and whenever I had asked the same question there I would get the response that “In the phrase “驚きに目を見開く” the particle に is being used adverbially to indicate the manner or circumstance under which the action is performed” Which is what marked my initial confusion. I am aware that this is not a perfect or even good way to learn, but I tried it in multiple different instances an would get a similar result which is what made me confused as to how it was acting adverbially. But clearly it isn’t, since I am guessing this is just the stem form of 驚く and jisho lists it as a plain noun which makes sense. It isn’t that I don’t understand that な adjectives are going to be used adverbially it was more that I am not sure if there wasn’t exceptions and that in this case somehow おどろき was being use adverbially like I mentioned. But I see how it can’t be for sure now.

Also I should probably tack on that a lot of my ways of thinking about this had come from the Cure Dolly channel and so therefore I was viewing all na-adjective as just being nouns themselves, and so whether that noun happens to be able to be used adjectivally too becomes rather gray, but I should just look each case up in jisho obviously and would have my answer like with おどろき. But it gets a little more confusing as within her model she argues 綺麗 is also a noun that can be used adjectivally, but others claim it is not a noun at all. You may/probably already know all of this about her channel but I just wanted to make it clear as I thought I explained myself poorly before.

I totally get your point about not thinking about it actively like that, and I would hope one day I don’t either, but I definitely do look at both of those sentences and distinguish the に function in my head even if they are read quickly.

Using them as an example, its easy to distinguish because obviously 妹 can’t be used adverbially, and when I ask myself why it obviously then explains why 驚き can’t be either, so I think its more a failure to trust my own knowledge when it comes to finding random answers that contradict it.

I actually do ask myself literally every single question you outlined at the bottom there whenever I read Japanese. Even if I am able to read most of the Japanese I encounter I still have to ask myself those questions, I actually find more advanced grammar points a lot quicker than the particles for the most part as I am constantly asking myself those questions about them, even after having spent a lot of time trying to work on them.

#19

I actually found this to be a pretty helpful post and it made me realize where I think part of my confusion stems from. I’m guessing a lot of the questions I am asking are silly however I genuinely mean them and don’t fully get it.

おいしそうに 食べる。To -eat- -in- a way that seems tasty.
In something like this, am I supposed to know the direction of this? Meaning, who is the experiencer of this, is someone watching someone else eat and thinking that the food must be delicious given the way the person is eating it? Or that the way the person is eating it is indicative that the person eating finds it delicious?

Maybe this is just a really stupid question as it seems others expect me to get this already but I truly just don’t. Hopefully my question makes sense.

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#20

Oh boy, Cure Dolly taking another victim…

She has some explanations that makes more sense then the “traditional” way. I found her explanation of the passive especially helpful.

But she has some wild claims, like nouns = な-adjectives. They are close cousins, sure, but they are not the same. You cannot apply さ, み etc. to nouns (〇 綺麗さ, × 妹さ), non-nouns cannot be subjects/objects/etc. by themselves (〇 妹は/が/を…, × 綺麗は/が/を…). What complicates matters is that many words are both :confused: (〇 幸せを感じる, 〇 幸せな家族)

Treat CD like you would a beginner textbook. If it helps your understanding, sure, use it, but there IS a reason why her (and Jay Rubin’s) model didn’t gain mainstream acceptance among linguists.

Then I can only give you one advice: read more, especially level-appropriate materials. I’m in the minority here I guess, but that’s why I loved textbooks (I did Genki and Tobira). It’s full of material that lets you practice the vocab and grammar you just learned, so you won’t be second-guessing yourself on the beginner-level grammar. Bunpro’s reading sections should serve a similar purpose.

We know that the eater is not experiencer. You wouldn’t use そう with yourself, since you already know that you find your food tasty, you don’t need to rely on visual/etc. information (that’s what そう implies). Everything else is in the context, not in the sentence - the eater could be the person you’re talking to, another person over there, your pet kitten… Did that answer your question?

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