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In response to my question about くすぐったい, I was told of the specific suffix in use, the "ったい." What is this ったい / -ttai suffix called in English and in Japanese (or what would one call it if it does not have a specific name)? What exactly does it connote? Would someone be kind enough to provide me with a brief list of Japanese words using this suffix? (I found Dono's romanization hard to understand {sorry})

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  • m.youtube.com/watch?v=LcTre93Ilyg&t=0m57s
    – user458
    Aug 3, 2012 at 2:29
  • Are you referring to japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6378/…
    – Golden Cuy
    Aug 3, 2012 at 2:56
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    Do you expect that each suffix in Japanese has a name (in English or Japanese) other than the suffix itself? Aug 3, 2012 at 4:41
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    I do not think that that is a reasonable expectation. For example, what is the name of suffix “-ish” as in word “English” in English? Linguists may have a technical term to refer to a particular suffix, but I do not know one. Aug 3, 2012 at 14:45
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    If I am not mistaken, the term “derivational suffix” usually means a suffix which changes parts-of-speech. It just describes one particular property of the suffix “-ish.” If you want a term which describes a certain property of suffix -ったい, please specify which property you want to describe. Otherwise, there is no way to answer that part of your question. Aug 3, 2012 at 15:28

2 Answers 2

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Some from a standard dictionary (using ending-by search) 厚{あつ}ぼったい (thick), はれぼったい (puffy), 口{くち}幅{はば}ったい (bragging), じれったい (impatient), 平{ひら}べったい (flat), 野暮{やぼ}ったい (uncouth).

It's interesting to me how many of these have a ば row kana before the ったい, and ぼったい appears in the dictionary, as being something that attaches to the stem of a i-adjective or verb (basically as a strengthener).

This form seems common in 遠州弁{えんしゅうべん}, for example as in this site which splits the words into plain ったい and ぼったい ending versions, and also in 静岡弁{しずおかべん}.

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Reading your conversation with Tsuyoshi ito in the comments, I guess you are asking whether -ttai is a derivational affix or an inflectional one. It is a derivational one.

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