その日。彼女のもとに、招かれざる客が現れた。
見るも巨大な鉄の塊。長い手足の歪な人型。
そんな異形共が、彼女の領域を侵したのである。
What would be the function of the bold も?
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Eiríkr Útlendi
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見るも is better remembered as a fixed adverbial idiom "patently", "manifestly" but usually qualifies what is shocking at first glance.
This phrase cooccurs with following adjectives across the BCCWJ:
| word | count |
|---|---|
| 無残/無惨/無慙/無ざん/むざん | 32 |
| 哀れ/あわれ | 7 |
| 恐ろしい/おそろしい | 5 |
| おぞましい | 4 |
| 痛々しい | 3 |
| あさましい | 1 |
| 嫌 | 1 |
| 悲しい | 1 |
| きれい | 1 |
| 燦爛 | 1 |
| 獰猛 | 1 |
| 悲惨 | 1 |
| まばゆい | 1 |
| まぶしい | 1 |
| みじめ | 1 |
(Edit: a few additions during a more complete query.)
So that 見るも巨大な could be translated "awfully massive" or "monstrously huge".
This grammar belongs to the historical 連体形準体法, attaching nominal particles directly to a verb, from the time when today's dictionary form represented some sort of participle. It is only surviving in proverbs and a few fixed expressions, such as [verb] + には, [verb] + がいい, and 思うに/言うに...
broccoli forest
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How do you use BCCWJ to search for collocations and their frequencies? I tried the 『梵天』（登録不要）version but what I got was usage instances. – Eddie Kal Feb 14 '21 at 22:34
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@EddieKal I have a subscription to 中納言 (free). With that you can query by morphological information and download the data to count frequencies. – broccoli forest Feb 15 '21 at 03:08