Making 「たくさん」act as a full-fledged 形容動詞{けいようどうし}

Question

dic.yahoo.co.jp、weblio.jp、and other dictionaries, state that the parts of speech for「たくさん」are noun and 形容動詞。imho, usage cases where たくさん is used as 形容詞 is uncommon. I have seen たくさん take the な particle in sentences such as "写真{しゃしん}がたくさんな記事{きじ}" . But, I have never seen たくさん take the に particle.

I recently heard the sentence:

"人がたくさん参加{さんか}した。"

That sounds ok to me but looks weird. I cannot help but wonder if something grammatically needs to be between "たくさん" and "参加". Surely, there must be a 助詞{じょし}, Perhaps, can you write:

人がたくさん に 参加した

To function as a full-fledged 形容動詞、たくさん must be able to take the 「に」助詞. I've never said "...たくさんに...". I would like to add this to my vocabulary. examples please?

In the thread titled たくさん：形容動詞 Tonky seems to say that "...たくさんに..." never happens. In the lengthy thread titled usage of たくさん vs. 多い no one creates a sentence that has the "...たくさんに..." construct.

If たくさん can take な, but not a に、then it would be questionable whether it is really a 形容動詞, right?

Answer 1

I think there are a couple of points to make here:

1. Nouns of quantity are similar to number+classifier compounds in that they're often used in "bare form" as adverbs:

   りんごを1個食べた ~ 1個のりんごを食べた
   りんごをたくさん食べた ~ たくさんのりんごを食べた

   in both cases, the former version with the adverbial form is the more natural one, and the latter tends to be used only when for some reason, the number+classifier+noun needs to be confined into one noun phrase. Note therefore: No particle is missing after たくさん.

2. The reason that *たくさんに doesn't exist is not that たくさん is not a 形容動詞, but semantic reasons, similar to how there's no "manily" in English, and "in a many way" doesn't make sense.

3. It seems you might not be aware that some 形容動詞 take の instead of な, for example たくさん and 普通. You'll find that there's some discussion whether it really makes sense to label these as 形容動詞 (see e.g. So-called の-adjectives - how does の *really* work?), but at least this explains why you found that label in your dictionary.