尽くさんばかりに?

[Jericho Desu]

Hey there guys, its been awhile (a very long one).
I've come across a word (?) that is confusing me and google is not providing me with answers:

覆い尽くさんばかりに

The full paragraph this was taken from is as follows:

店舗全体を覆い尽くさんばかりに伸び放題となった蔓草は生長がある段階に達した時点で建物から養分を吸い取られてしまったみたいに
班状に茶色く枯れており、辺りの空気も一段と乾き切っている。

Now my brain thinks that 尽くさん is an abbreviation of "尽くさないの" and with the ばかりに its something along the lines of "almost nearly completely covering" in this context, but I'm not sure if that is correct and after searching on google I see that 尽くさんばかり might be a completed word on its own thats used mainly in written Japanese?

If someone could clear things up for me I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Toritoribe]

Your interpretation "almost nearly completely covering" is correct.

I once discussed ～んばかり with few members in this forum.

降り出さん / 降り出そうだ / おこりたくなる / 別の実験では...

After this discussion, I found an explanation in 学研国語大辞典.

｢…んばかり｣の｢ん｣は打ち消しの助動詞｢ぬ｣と同じものか推量の助動詞｢む｣からきたものかはっきりしない｡

Thus, the etymology is obscure even for linguists.

 

[Jericho Desu]

Wow, just trying to go through everything was pretty difficult

So I guess that this is derived from ぬ as in the perfect form which could actually be derived from む (speaker's guess) which got misused or something like that. I think I'm still confused by what I just read

Thank you very much Toritoribe

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

｢…んばかり｣の｢ん｣は打ち消しの助動詞｢ぬ｣と同じものか推量の助動詞｢む｣からきたものかはっきりしない｡

"It is not clear whether the 'n' in 'nbakari' is the same thing as the negative auxiliary verb 'nu' or is a derivative of the 'guessing' auxiliary verb 'mu'."
That is since both auxiliary verbs become 'ん' in modern Japanese, there's no way to know which it came from originally.

 

[Toritoribe]

It's not that simple.
撥音[Hatsuon] is written as ん not only in modern Japanese but also in classical Japanese. ん is a relatively new hiragana. It's said that it began to be used in Muromachi period . Before that, e.g. in Heian Period , ん was not written in texts even when it's pronounced.
As for the auxiliary verb む, although it began to be pronounced as ん already in Heian period, む had been being used to describe ん, since ん didn't exist yet at that time. In other words, we can usually know the etymology of ん by analyzing old texts. ～んばかり is an exception. There exists the evidence to prove that the two hypotheses (ぬ and む) both can be possible. That's what the explanation I quoted above says.