4 The Adjective Class in Tariana 107TABLE 5. 'Big' and 'large' in the plural and in the singular
Big Large, thickSingular hanu-plus noun class marker male- plus noun class marker
Plural male- plus noun class marker plus -plural marker
male- can be used in the singular, with the meaning 'thick, large'. It is restricted to
inanimate referents, e.g. sapatu malepa (shoe large:NCL.LARGE.opEN.spACE) 'large
shoe'. The meanings 'big' and Targe' are expressed with two different adjectival stems
in the singular and neutralized in the plural—this is shown in Table 5.
The adjective 'small', tsuite, is irregular in the way it marks animate plurals: the
animate adjectival plural marker cannot attach directly to the stem tsu-; it has
to be preceded by the general animate classifier -ita. The plural of Ifiari tsu-ite
(man small-NCL.ANiM) 'a small man' is atfa tsu-ita-peni (man:PL small-CL.ANiM-
PL.ANIM) 'small men. This is reminiscent of how the animate plural is formed on
male- 'big, large'. (This irregularity is also found with the interrogative kui- when
used as a modifier, e.g. kuita-peni (which:CL.ANiM-PL.ANiM) 'which ones?'.) All
other adjectives attach the animate adjectival pluralizer to the root, e.g. Ifiari walite
(man young:NCL.ANiM) 'a young man vs. atfa wali-peni (man:PL young-PL.ANiM)
'young men'; and Ifiari ma-.tfite (man bad:NCL.ANiM) 'a bad man vs. atfa ma:1fi-peni
(man:PL bad-PL.ANiM) 'bad men.
Two other dimension adjectives are synchronically monomorphemic, but his-
torically derived. The adjective makite 'whole, extended' is derived from the root
maka- which is not used on its own (its function in the modern language is that
of a 'dummy' root used to form lexical items by attaching classifiers, e.g. maka-
dawa (something-CL.ROOM) 'a room; something room-like'; maka-nai (some-
thing-CL.LAKE) 'a lake; something lake-like'). The adjective wi:te 'long; far away'
has a cognate root in the stative verbs wya-ka 'be far away' (-ka is a semi-fossilized
thematic marker) (also see §4).
B. AGE: walite 'new, young'; emite 'young, unripe'; upite 'old, worn out' (inanimate
referents only).
The term walite 'new, young' is unusual in that it can be nominalized with the idio-
syncratic suffixes -ki-ri (masculine), -ki-ru (feminine), to yield wali-ki-ri 'young
man and wali-ki-ru 'young woman'. The term emite is also used in the meaning
of'inexperienced' (that is, relating to human propensity); when used headlessly, it
means 'young one; child'.
The term upite is used with inanimate referents only, e.g.yarumakasi upite (cloth-
ing old:NCL.ANiM) 'old clothing', ha-phe upi-phe (this-CL.LEARLiKE old-CL.LEAR
LIKE) 'this old (book)'. This root also occurs in two adverbs: upi-tha (old-PR) 'in the
old days' and upi-mia (old-only) 'the same place; the same way', and in two nouns:
uphedo (underlying form: upi-ha-do) (old/late-parent-FEM) 'widow' and upheniri