7

その日。彼女のもとに、招かれざる客が現れた。

見る巨大な鉄の塊。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?

1 Answer 1

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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
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...

2
  • 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
    Commented Feb 14, 2021 at 22:34
  • @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. Commented Feb 15, 2021 at 3:08

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