n6 Alexandra Y. AikhenvaldAnd (21), with -iha as a suffix, was used to refer to a blackish animal not compared
to anything else.
(21) kadihite
(kada-iha-ite—underlying form)
black-APPR-NCL.ANIM
'a blackish one'
As just mentioned, the enclitic =iha implies a comparison; the other comparative
structure in Tariana which involves the verb -yena 'exceed' is discussed by Hajek
(Chapter 15). Neither of these allow the inclusion of an overt parameter of com-
parison. That is, dimension and colour adjectives are somewhat similar to adjec-
tives in Papantla Totonac (Chapter 6) in that they can take part in a construction
with comparative meaning.(b) Adjectives which combine just with the approximative suffix -iha.
Adjectives of all the other semantic groups take just the approximative suffix, e.g.
piwa-iha-peri (salty-APPR-CL.COLL) 'not very salty, salty-ish'. And the two historic-
ally derived colour terms mentioned at the end of E in §3.1, kesolite 'brown and ka-
punite 'striped', can only occur with the suffix -iha (cf. kesolehite (brown:APPR:NCL.
ANIM) 'brownish').
Why are walite 'new' (from the 'age' group) and hipisite 'bitter' (from the physic-
al properties group) the only adjectives in their semantic groups to allow variable
behaviour for the approximative -/=iha? The likely reason lies in the semantics of
these adjectives, and of other members of their groups. 'New', or 'young', is viewed
as a changeable or gradable property; something may be more or less young or
new. In contrast, upite 'old, worn out' is viewed as a terminal and unchangeable
state of affairs which does not imply any degree. Along similar lines, my Tariana
consultants stated that all the terms for tastes and physical properties, except for
hipisite, describe time-stable properties. Along similar lines, the Tariana verbs
which refer to an inherently unchangeable state cannot form a morphological
causative, and thus, no morphological causative can be formed on verbs describ-
ing physical properties such as hamu 'hot', hape 'cold', or kasitana 'annoyed'. Stat-
ive verbs which denote such concepts as 'cool' and 'lukewarm' describe inherently
changeable states, and can form morphological causatives; that is, they belong to a
different system from 'cold' and 'hot'. See Aikhenvald (2oooc).
Adjectives do not have any other nominal grammatical categories. An underived
adjective cannot be head of a possessive noun phrase (see §3.3); and it cannot take
possessive prefixes.
3.2.2. Morphological properties of adjectives compared with verbs
The adjectival roots of groups A, B, D, and F (§3.1) never occur on their own: they
always have to take a noun class marker. Unlike these semantic types, the roots of
underived adjectives of value and of physical property can occur on their own, as