no Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
This 'double noun class agreement' is attested only with the singular animate noun
class.
Underived adjectives of some semantic groups do have specific derivational
suffixes. We mentioned under B in §3.1 that the adjective 'new, young' can be nom-
inalized with the derivational affixes -ki-ri 'masculine', -ki-ru 'feminine' not found
anywhere else in the language. Underived adjectives which refer to primary col-
ours take a derivational affix -whare 'not quite the shade of colour; coLOUR-ish', e.g.
ewa-whare 'yellow-ish', hare-whare 'whit-ish'. The adjective 'bad, adverse' combines
with the verbalizer -ka not used with any other adjective. Unlike nouns, adjectives
cannot be verbalized with the causativizing-verbalizing suffix -ita.
The properties of the different semantic groups of underived adjectives are
summarized in Table 9.
Semantic types of adjectives show different morphosyntactic behaviour in
other languages discussed in this volume. Dimension adjectives in Semelai have a
number of unusual morphological properties (Kruspe, Chapter 12). Along similar
lines, different semantic groups of adjectives in Papantla Totonac display slightly
different properties; one salient feature of dimension adjectives being the way in
which they form plural (Levy, Chapter 6).
3.3. SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS OF ADJECTIVES
The relationship between the two open word classes and functional slots in Tari-
ana was summarized in Table 4. Table 10 extends this to also include adjectives.
Similarly to nouns, any adjective can be the head of an intransitive predicate, as
illustrated in (34). Any adjective can be used as a head of an NP, as shown in (35), a
continuation of (34) in the text.
TABLE 9. Morphological properties of semantic groups of underived adjectives
Property Semantic group
- irregular plural forms Dimension: 'big', large', 'small'
- Specific derivational suffix Colour
- Specific nominalizer Age: young
- Used as S 0 verbs Value; physical property
- Used as verbal modifiers Value; physical property
- Used as S 0 and as Sio verbs Value
- Used in verbal compounding with stative verbs Value: 'proper, good'; 'bad, adverse'
- Specific verbalizer Value: 'bad, adverse'
- Used with the suffix -iha and the clitic =iha Dimension; colour; age ('new');
'approximative' with a meaning difference physical property ('bitter') - Marking agreement with the same head twice Dimension: 'big' and 'small'