Innovative binomial adjectives in Japanese food descriptions and beyond

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the casual register of Japanese has developed a new class of binomial adjectives, such as fuwa-toro ‘fluffy and creamy’ and gū-kawa ‘overwhelmingly cute’. These terms are particularly common in creative, nuanced descriptions of food, fashion, and personality. This paper identifies four general constraints on the element ordering of these binomial adjectives that apply to different parts of the morphological network. Similar to mimetic (ideophonic) words, these adjectives are immediate to specific situations or sensory experiences and help us to express subjective, multimodal impressions that are otherwise inexpressible.