3 The Two Adjective Classes in Manange 83the nouns 4khye 'road', 2mi 'person' are obligatory, and may not be unexpressed.
(14) 4khye itA,rkya=ri,
road white=LOC
ii) A 3por iyA mo,
isg take go COP
'I take (the prayer scarf) on the white road (to heaven).'
(15) in 2mi 3kathe=ko ishA. itsA imi
DIST.DEM person thin=DEF meat eat EVID
"That thin guy ate the meat.'
Verbs may also modify nouns within a noun phrase. However, these almost always
precede the noun within a relative clause. To form a relative clause, the verb is suf-
fixed by the nominalizer -pA and the NP coreferential to the head noun is unex-
pressed, as in the following examples:
(16) 3nwo-pA ishA itsA-tsi
fry-NR meat eat-PERF
'I ate the fried meat.'
(17) 3kAr/=ri ife-pA 3ya=tse=tse,
mountain=LOC stay-NR yak=ERG=PL
ikhi imlay.cha imi
3sg curse EVID
"The yaks who stayed in the mountains, they cursed (their friends).'
Thus verbs are syntactically distinct from simple adjectives in that they only mod-
ify a noun when they are in a pre-nominal relative clause. Note that this is true
even of so-called Tight' relative clauses, which consist solely of a verb, as in 3qwo
'fry' in (16) above.^6
3.3.2. Copula complementsSimple adjectives may occur in the copula complement slot, and are obligator-
ily followed by the copula imo. Thus the sentence given in (i8a) has the structure
(^6) One younger speaker, however, did allow for some post-nominal modification by verbs during
elicitation. In most cases there was a semantic distinction. The pre-nominal ordering referred more
explicitly to the event denoted by the verb, as in the phrase 2khol-pA 2kyu=ko, which means 'boiled
water that was just boiled and is still very hot'. The post-nominal ordering refers to a resultant state,
as in the phrase 2kyu 2khol-pA=ko, which means 'the boiled water, which has since cooled and is now
safe to drink'. In such cases, the pre-nominal ordering appears to be the true relative clause, while the
post-nominal ordering appears to be the use of a verb as an attributive adjective. We have found no
examples of the post-nominal type in connected speech. It is unclear whether other speakers have
the same pattern. We feel that the generalization between pre-nominal ordering constituting rela-
tive clauses and post-nominal ordering constituting adjectival attribution still holds. For this speak-
er, and possibly others, some non-stative verbs appear to function as verb-like adjectives as well. This
deserves further exploration.