Re: Different flavors of one word

Anthony Bryant wrote:

> Yes, fossilized. It means "preserved usages" -- while you
> will usually encounter ある instead of 有る or 在る, you'll
> probably encounter 有り余る instead of ありあまる.

It can only be fossilized if you assume writing ある as 有る is the
same thing as writing ありあまる as 有り余る, but that isn't
the case. The general trend in expository writing for mass consumption
(magazines, newspapers, etc.) for the past 30 years has been to write
"grammar-carrying" words in hiragana, but not "meaning-carrying" words.
有り様 and 有り余る are clearly not simple grammatical wordlets,
which is why they are correctly written in kanji. There's nothing
fossilized about that usage.

Marc

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