Re: さ attached to nouns


"Ben Bullock" <benkasminbullock@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:erjcvk$r1b$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Jim Breen" <jwb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:9ILCh.1504$8U4.1207@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I occasionally see さ attached to nouns, such as in the following from
Eijiro: "busy-work〔同義語として make-work がある。ただし busy-work は、
*勤勉さ*や*多忙さ*の印象を人に与えることが強調されるが、make-work にはそ
のようなニュアンスはない〕"

This looks awfully like the adjective-nominalizing さ, although 勤勉 and
多忙 are nouns already. Is this happening because 勤勉 and 多忙 are more
commonly used as な-adjectives?

Are they often used as nouns? I can't imagine "勤勉や多忙の印象" being used here. Could someone provide an example of 勤勉 or 多忙 used as nouns?

I looked in the WWWJDIC example sentences and only found things like

エジソンの成功は知性と勤勉との結果でもある。 [T]
We attribute Edison's success to intelligence and hard work.

勤勉は成功の母。 [T]
Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

These seem to be very formal, stiff sentences.

I looked for examples of 多忙 used as a noun but couldn't find anything much.
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Here is those noun examples in one sentence.

勤勉が多忙を生む。
Deligence causes busyness.
Diligence makes people busy.

勤勉さ　and 　多忙さ, I think, could be considered to be the two cases:

1) adjective - na + sa

2) noun + sa

Reasoning: The former cases always mean deligence and busyness.
However, the latter cases also include less dligence and less-busyness.

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B. Ito


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