0

食器や家具などもいかにもな高級品で固められ、まるでモデルルームのような壮観さだ。

I understand the general meaning of the sentence. But how should I parse the bold part, especially the で固められ part? If the bold clause just means "the room is equipped with high class dishes and furniture", I’d expect it to be 食器や家具などの高級品で固められ. But the original seems to say "the dishes and furniture are high class and equipped with", which doesn’t make sense. I hope you understand what confuses me.

1
  • 1
    Would you understand it if it were 固定され instead of 固められ?
    – istrasci
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 17:33

1 Answer 1

2

In the version you suggested,「食器や家具などいかにもな高級品で固められ、まるでモデルルームのような壮観さだ」, the (topic-)subject for "固められ" would be implicit "部屋" (or whatever it is that is being described here) so that fully written (「部屋は食器や家具などのいかにもな高級品で固められ、まるでモデルルームのような壮観さだ」), it would mean something like this:

The room, equipped solidly with ostentatious luxury articles, like the tableware and furniture, have an impressive appearance like that of a model room.

(Actually, I now see a potential problem with this sentence centering on the reference of 「食器や家具など」, which I will discuss at the end of this answer.)

In the original sentence 「食器や家具などもいかにもな高級品で固められ (...)」, however, the subject is「食器や家具など」, marked with も to suggest that they are not the only things that look expensive. So it can be translated like this:

The tableware and furniture are all luxury articles too, giving the room an impressive appearance like that of a model room.

This time 'be equipped solidly' does not work for 「固められ」, because here the predicative construction 「XをYで固める」 is used to mean 'make X solid with Y' in a sense along the lines of 'make it so that the all (the members) of X is(/are) Y'.


Okay, about the potential problem with that sentence. Looking closely, 「食器や家具などのいかにもな高級品」 in「部屋は食器や家具などのいかにもな高級品で固められ、まるでモデルルームのような壮観さだ」 seems to suggest the notion that all tableware and furniture in general are ostentatious luxury items ('ostentatious luxury items like tableware and furniture'), which is not true.

That said, it also feels possible to consider 「食器や家具など」 as having a definite reference ('the tableware and furniture (in the room) '), as I did in the translation.

Or maybe when we say things like 「部屋は食器や家具などのいかにもな高級品で固められ」 , even if it does not have a definite reference,「食器や家具など」 can be taken to pick showy luxury tableware and furniture out of all tableware and furniture. After all, I usually would not notice anything iffy about phrases like「時計やアクセサリーなどの高級品を売る店」 even though there are many cheap watches and accessories out there.

2
  • Thank you vey much. It seems I failed to understand the construction 「XをYで固める」previously. So the も in the orignial sentence is used to replace を (i.e. the active version of the original sentence is 食器や家具などをいかにもな高級品で固める) , right? Commented Dec 25, 2021 at 7:32
  • 1
    Yup. Here are some examples gleaned from the web: "頭の先からつま先まで高級ブランドで固める" "何も服装を高級ブランドで固める" 必要はありません。" "パーティを物理キャラで固めることで" "5人全員をお気に入りキャラで固めるとやり込み達成が危ういので" "ハローキティSS戦で最も重要なことは、パーティをサンリオキャラで固めることです" (For some 'equip' works, for others it doesn't.)
    – goldbrick
    Commented Dec 25, 2021 at 23:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .