3 The Two Adjective Classes in Manange 894.1. PHONOLOGICAL PROPERTIES
Verb-like adjectives evidence the same phonological behaviour of the lexical
classes of nouns and verbs. They are largely monosyllabic. They also conform to
the CCVC syllable template, and the constraints on which elements may occupy
C-slots. In addition, verb-like adjectives are found in all four tone categories.
4.2. MORPHOLOGICAL PROPERTIES
When functioning in attributive contexts, verb-like adjectives may take the full
range of noun-phrase enclitics, providing they are the last element in the NP. This
is predicted behaviour with clitics. Since verbs never occur as the last element in
the NP they are never cliticized.
Verb-like adjectives inflect with some, but not all, of the morphology associated
with verbs. Verb-like adjectives occur in most environments with the nominalizer
-pA. They also may inflect with the perfective -tsi, e.g. 2khA,r/-tsi 'was cold'. And they
may inflect with the clause-chaining suffix -tse in a variety of structures, as in the
following example:
(38) 2khA,r/-tse ilA-tse iten,
cold-en do-en then,
2khA,r/-tse 2khA,r/-tse 4a-thya-pA iU-tse
cold-en cold-en NEG-bear-NR do-cn
'Because of being cold, being very cold (the buffalo) couldn't bear it..."
Verb-like adjectives also inflect with the purposive suffix which follows the nom-
inalizer, e.g. 4phlo-pA-ri 'in order to be rich'. They may also be followed by the con-
ditional particle, e.g. 4phlo kyAtiA 'if s/he is rich'.
Verb-like adjectives are also similar to verbs in that they may compound with iU
'do' to form a morphological causative. This was illustrated in example (34) above.
By contrast, simple adjectives, because they are not verb-like, do not participate
in these structures. In all cases, they must precede imo 'be' or itA 'become', which
then take the verbal morphology.
Verb-like adjectives do not take all of the inflectional possibilities that true
verbs take. For example, they do not occur with -tso, a modal suffix indicating
speaker commitment to bring about a state of affairs. The fact that this suffix does
not occur on verb-like adjectives may be attributable to the fact that most property
concepts are not controllable, hence a speaker may not easily commit to taking on
that property.
Verb-like adjectives also do not occur with the adverbial subordinating suffix
-ni. This morpheme, which suffixes to a nominalized verb stem, indicates an inter-
propositional relationship of sequentiality. If the first verb denotes an event, then it
must be completed before the onset of the event of the second clause: