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My edition of こゝろ by 夏目漱石 includes an addendum written by his son about his memories of his father. In the part recounting his funeral, he uses the following sentence, which I can't make sense of grammatically (especially the bolded part):

また小さい私がでんぐり返しもうちかねまじく驚かされた坊さんの喝という怖がるべき大声を忘れられない。

Eddie Kal
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R. Kazeno
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    This question on *chiebukuro* seems related: [しかねまじきとは、どういう意味ですか？](https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q12216554977) – aguijonazo Oct 09 '21 at 14:32
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    The verb 打つ collocates with でんぐり返し. – aguijonazo Oct 09 '21 at 14:38
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    When asking about a phrase, it is best to avoid copying it starting with a particle. The も is a particle. –  Oct 09 '21 at 16:11

1 Answers1

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Do you know how ～かねない and ～かねる work? かねる is a verb that literally means something like "to find it impossible/difficult" or "rather not". With this in mind, the phrase in question can be parsed like this:

  • でんぐり返し: "roll (on a floor)"
  • も: "even" (∼すら)
  • うち: "to do (でんぐり返し)" (this 打つ is a verb collocated with でんぐり返し; see this)
  • かね: continuative form of かねる
  • まじく: "in a way that (something) seems unlikely/impossible" (continuative/adverbial form of まじ, which is an auxiliary for negative inference)

Put together, でんぐり返しもうちかねまじく literally means "in a way that even avoiding doing a roll seemed impossible". The ordinary way to say this in modern Japanese would be ひっくり返らずにはいられない(だろうという)ほど驚かされた (or more simply ひっくり返りそうなくらい驚かされた). So he was so surprised at the voice that he almost tumbled.

naruto
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