3 The Two Adjective Classes in Manange 85(24) With noun
in 3 tore la-re imo
DIST.DEM graveyard NEG-COP COP
'It (that piece of land) wasn't a graveyard (at the time of the avalanche).'
To negate examples with itA 'become', the negative morpheme prefixes to the verb:
(25) With adjective
2muntse=ri 4thi=ko 2mona ia-tA-tsi
night=LOC house=DEF dark NEG-become-PERF
'At night, the house did not become dark.'
(26) With noun
in store ia-tA-tsi
DIST.DEM graveyard NEG-become-PERF
'It did not become a graveyard.' (Elicited, based on example (24))
It is possible to omit the copula in constructions with both nominal and adjectival
copula complements:
(27) 2tso=ko 2mi
PROX=DEF eye
"This is an eye.'
(28) 4thi=ko 3car/ku
house=DEF green
"The house is green.'
These verbless clauses occur more frequently in elicited contexts than in connect-
ed speech, which may be in part due to the way new information is presented, or
the way that given information is modified in Manange narratives. Actually, the
only examples we have from connected speech use colour terms. An example is
given in (29), which is a description by a Manange woman of Nar (a Nepal ethnic
group) clothing:
(29) 2phi=ko ipir/kya, 3nar/=ko=ri wlkya,
top=DEF blue, inside=DEF=LOC red,
"The top of (it was) blue, the inside part (was) red.'
There are some interesting questions as to the structure of such examples which
lack a final copula. Beginning with the ascriptive examples such as (27-28), Dixon
(Ch. i) suggests that these can be analysed as two NPs in apposition. However, one
wishes the analysis to reflect the symmetry of structure in Manange between the
ascriptive and predicative adjective cases. One possible structural analysis of ex-
amples such as (28-29), those which consist of an NP and a simple adjective only,
would be to assume that in the absence of the copula, the adjective takes on the
role of the intransitive predicate, and the structure simplifies from a clause with