In one of the Bleach anime ending songs, "Hanabi" has the following line:
繋ぎゆく この想い 愛しき 君
"itoshiki" seems to come from "itoshii", but how does this -ki form of i-adjective work? I found a few other adjectives that have -ki forms, e.g. 幼き{おさなき}, 素晴らしき{すばらしき}, 古き{ふるき}, 良き{よき} etc but that's about it.
Is this form productive? Is it selective, i.e. only some i-adjectives can have this form? Or has it become archaic, and thus only limited to those that survived into present Japanese?
Answer
The -ki ending is the archaic rentaikee (adnominal form). It used to be standardly used in relative clauses/attributive uses of an adjective. The change from -ki to the present -i is called i-ombin. Today, this is used only when the writer wants to use the archaic form for some literary effect such as in literature, lyrics, poems, etc.
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