94 Carol Ge.ne.ttl and Kristine Hildebrandt
(52) Verb-like adjective
*ir)A 4phlo-pA 3say ikhA imo
isg rich-NR desire come COP
'I want to be rich.'
Rather, verb-like adjectives must precede the copulas imo or itA to express the de-
sire to be or to become a particular attribute:n
(53) ii)A 4phlo-pA imo-pA 3say ikhA imo
isg rich-NR COP-NR desire come COP
'I want to be rich.'
It is interesting to note that while verb-like adjectives are excluded from forming
complements, it is possible for them to participate in adverbial clauses, such as the
conditional and the purposive. There is no clear semantic explanation for this dis-
tinction; one must attribute it to the fact that verb-like adjectives form a distinct
lexical class, and that the syntactic behaviour of this class parallels that of simple
adjectives.
4.4. COMPARISON OF VERB-LIKE ADJECTIVES WITH OTHER LEXICAL CLASSES
It is clear that one can differentiate verb-like adjectives from nouns by a large
number of properties (e.g. inflection, ability to head an NP, modification) and
there is no question that verb-like adjectives are not nouns. It is very interesting,
however, to compare verb-like adjectives with simple adjectives and verbs. Table 3
lists a number of relevant properties for the three classes.^12 We see that verb-like
adjectives are similar to verbs and distinct from simple adjectives in both their
phonotactic and their morphological properties. As discussed above, the failure
of verb-like adjectives to take some of the verbal inflections may be attritubed
to their stativity, and hence may be a result of their semantic properties and not
strictly due to a lexical class distinction. Verb-like adjectives also share with verbs
the ability to stand as intransitive predicates, but only in the perfective. This is the
only syntactic similarity between the two classes.
Verb-like adjectives share the majority of their syntactic behaviour with sim-
ple adjectives. Verb-like and simple adjectives occupy the same position in the
NP and occur as copula complements in predicative constructions. They are
also both barred from serving as complements of verbs. The only difference in
syntactic behaviour between the two classes is in the perfective aspect, where verb-
(^1) ' Not surprisingly the same is true of simple adjectives, which also require use of a copula to
form a complement.
(^12) As noted by Dixon in Chapter i of this volume, two other criteria which commonly differenti-
ate adjectives from other lexical classes are comparative constructions and intensifiers. In Manange,
comparative constructions can be used with adjectival, verbal, or nominal standards of comparison.
Intensifiers may modify verbs, both adjective classes, and nouns, with a similar semantic interpret-
ation of intensification. Thus neither of these criteria are relevant for differentiating adjective class-
es from other lexical classes.