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I was told 眠たい was an adjective, and that it is an exceptional case. How does it work as an adjective and what is its relation to the verb 眠る?

yadokari
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  • '眠たい' is a colloquial version of '眠い', 'sleepy.' Maybe it has something to do with '眠りたい'(want to sleep), no? (Hmm... maybe not) –  Jan 22 '12 at 01:28
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    What do you mean by "an exceptional case" – fefe Jan 22 '12 at 01:59
  • @fefe in that it is related to a verb. – yadokari Jan 22 '12 at 05:00
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    There is a somewhat similar case with 煙たい. (Conjugations can be described as 'irregular'. I'm not sure if it's useful to talk of derivations as 'irregular'. – Bathrobe Jan 24 '12 at 00:11
  • @Bathrobe san, Ah, 煙い and 煙たい. 眠い and 眠たい. Then 重い and 重たい, right? What else... –  Jan 27 '12 at 14:51
  • Nice, Chocolate, I didn't think of 重たい. But I can't think of any others. – Bathrobe Jan 31 '12 at 23:59

2 Answers2

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Yes, 眠たい is an adjective. It's a synonym of 眠い, meaning "sleepy." (大辞泉 entry here.)

From what I can find (specifically, 大辞林's explanation), 眠たい is in fact related to 眠る, but the 「〜たい」 here is different from the desiderative "I want to" 「〜たい」. This 「〜たい」 is a shortened form of 甚{いた}い (or いたし, in its original form in older Japanese), which is a 連用形 verb ending in classical Japanese meaning "extremely X, where X is the state related to the verb." Here, this "state" is sleepiness. Note that this 甚{いた}い can attach to verbs and give them an emphatic adjectival meaning, and does not attach to adjectives.

めでたい (happy, fortunate) has a similar etymology: 愛{め}で (from the 連用形 of 愛{め}ず, the old form of 愛する) ＋　甚{いた}し.

Edit: Just to clarify, the original form of 眠たい was 眠{ねぶ}り甚{いた}し, but a combination of phonetic drift and other factors led it to eventually evolve into its current form.

fefe
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NattyBumppo
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It is an i-adjective because it conjugates as so.

眠たい, 眠たかった, 眠たくない, ...

Its relation to the verb 眠る cannot be handled systematically within derivational morphology. The stem of 眠る is nemur-, whereas 眠たい only uses a portion (nemu-) of it. So it has to be considered that this formation is idiosyncratic, not systematic. Note that the meaning is also idiosyncratic.

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    「眠くない」は、「眠たくない」では・・？（「眠たい、眠たかった、眠たくない」と「眠い、眠かった、眠くない」がセットになると・・） –  Jan 22 '12 at 04:01