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Taking yadokari's sentence:

彼女は表情が生き生きとしておりとてもかわいい。

The part that I need help understanding is the relation of 生き生きとして with　表情　and　居る.

Looking up the dictionary entry for 生き生き, it is "an adverb taking the と particle"

(Question 1) Does the adverb modify して? Or is 生き生きとして treated as an adverb as a whole?

EDIT: What is the difference between 1. 生き生きとする and 2. 生き生きとして居る?

(Question 2) Is 2. the ~ている construction of 1.? And what is its significance when used with an adverb? English parsing would be greatly appreciated.

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Flaw
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1 Answers1

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「生き生きと」 is the adverb. 「して」 is the ～て form of 「する」.

"vividly do"

Of course, you need the 連用形 that follows in order to translate it completely, as is given in your other question.

EDIT:

Yes.

居る いる
(v1,vi,uk,aux-v) to be (of animate objects); to exist; to stay; (after the -te form of a verb) verb indicating continuing action or state (i.e. to be ..ing, to have been ..ing); (P)

Same as without the adverb. Only with the adverb instead.

"be vividly doing"

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
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  • how do you parse "facial expression that is vividly doing"? My gut feeling says it's not the progressive aspect but the stative aspect. – Flaw Sep 30 '11 at 06:14
  • You can't, which is why you can't translate literally. "vivid facial expression" – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Sep 30 '11 at 06:18
  • Is it the same use of ~している　in "私は長い足をしている" (I have long legs)? Then "彼女は表情が生き生きとしている" would be "She has vivid facial expressions". – Flaw Sep 30 '11 at 06:47
  • Sure, but instead of modifying 「している」 by +を, you're modifying it by an adverb. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Sep 30 '11 at 06:49
  • It makes sense to "have a noun as an attribute". But it's quite hard to understand to "have an adverb as an attribute". Possibly cause I'm thinking in English and not in Japanese. – Flaw Sep 30 '11 at 06:58
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    @Flaw: I think the thing you're up against here is that する isn't always "do". It's also a state. For example, you can say 匂いする, which you could in a way, translate as "doing a smell", but in English we would just say "smelling". Likewise, here you have "doing a vivid expression", which in English we would say more like "expressing vividly". Personally, I'd go with "vivacious expression". – Questioner Sep 30 '11 at 10:15
  • After the helpful input on my original question, I've ended up with this very loose english translation: "What a vivacious expression she has...she's so cute!" I tried to make this as colloquial an english expression as I could. What I would like to know is this: to me, the original japanese expression seems like something one would say aloud in spoken japanese. – yadokari Sep 30 '11 at 15:45
  • cont.- Yet in all the ways we have tried to translate it into english ( perhaps with my last attempt being an exception), the sentence has ended up sounding like something one would only see in written english- one would rarely say aloud "what a lively expression she has!" ... it would seem more natural just to say "what an expression" or "look at that expression". So, is the original Japanese sentence a spoken colloquial example, or a more literary one? – yadokari Sep 30 '11 at 15:48