信じられないことに

zuotengdazuo · 29 Jan 2020

声は素っ気ないままだったが、信じられないことに折紙が言葉を続けてきた。

Hi. Since 信じられないこと is the content of 言葉, I don't understand why に is attached to 信じられないこと. What is the function of the に in red here?
Thank you.

Toritoribe · 29 Jan 2020

信じられないこと is not the content of 言葉. ～ことに is attached to verbs/adjectives that express emotion, and is used to express previously what the speaker thinks about the following thing.
e.g.
驚いたことに
残念なことに
興味深いことに
恐ろしいことに
ありがたいことに

Some linguists call this に注釈副詞, i.e., adverb for annotation, but this is not officially accepted. Anyway, ～ことに means "this (= what I'm going to say) is ~, but...", so it close to ～ことだが in meaning. Thus, your example means "this is unbelievable, but..."

zuotengdazuo · 29 Jan 2020

Toritoribe said:
e.g.
驚いたことに
残念なことに
興味深いことに
恐ろしいことに
ありがたいことに

Thank you. Yes, I know this usage. But my textbook only gives examples of ことに where there is a comma separating the ことに clause from the main clause. And it doesn't say ない form can be used before ことに. I guess my textbook is not comprehensive enough to cover all the uses.

bentenmusume · 29 Jan 2020

zuotengdazuo said:
Thank you. Yes, I know this usage. But my textbook only gives examples of ことに where there is a comma separating the ことに clause from the main clause.

Japanese is not like English where the presence or absence of a comma can affect meaning or grammaticality. There is no such thing as a grammatically mandated comma in Japanese.

And it doesn't say ない form can be used before ことに. I guess my textbook is not comprehensive enough to cover all the uses.

I'm assuming your book did show examples where ことに was modified by an -い adjective. Considering that ない form essentially functions as an -い adjective, I'm not sure why you'd assume it couldn't be used.

zuotengdazuo · 29 Jan 2020

Thank you, bentenmusume-san!

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