Friday, 17 June 2016

grammar - What does しまったり mean?


In this line from a song,



大人【おとな】になるにつれ 遠【とお】ざかってしまったり



I'm tempted to say it translates to



As you grow older, you're growing apart (from me)




but I'm not entirely sure how to interpret しまったり. It doesn't seem to be a form of 〜たり, but I can't find much explanation of 〜り either. Could someone help me understand the grammar here?


Edit: As I research more and more, I'm questioning more and more my parsing of the sentence. So if I have it completely wrong, please correct me.



Answer



To me, this looks like morphological building blocks being strung together.


So you have the main verb in て-form: [遠]{とお}ざかって


Then this is followed by しまう, a construction which indicates that the action was accidental (or finished completely). So 食べてしまいました means either "I accidentally ate it" or "I ate it all".


In the example you gave, the しまう is in たり form (create with the rule: short past form + り) which is used to mean "things like X"- in this case, "you're doing things like (totally/accidentally) growing apart from me", etc.


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