7 The Small Adjective Class in Jarawara 183PNs in Jarawara cover a wide semantic range:- Orientation (17 members) include mese/mese 'top surface of, baki/bako 'inside
surface of. - Whole and part (14): boni/bono 'whole thing', kote/kote 'piece', na.fi/nafi 'all'.
- Body parts (62): noki/noko 'eye, face', tame/ feme 'foot',jifori/jifori 'tail'.
- Parts of plants (19): mowe/mowe 'flower', mati/matone cord, rope'.
- Physical characteristics and properties (18): kakitiri/kakitiri 'itch', mahi/maho
'smell'. - Noise and language (4): moni/moni 'noise', ini/ino 'name', ati/ati 'voice'.
- Image and dream (5): hani/hano 'design, picture', watari/watari(ne) 'dream'.
- Association (9): teheltehene 'something mixed with', tase/tesene 'companion of.
- Containers and other artefacts (7): wije/wijene 'vessel, container', atari/'atari 'or-
nament'. - Water, fire, and light (11): jifi/jifone 'fire, firewood', fehe/fehene 'liquid, juice, sap,
water'. - Food (3): tafe/tefe 'food', saharine/saharine 'broth, mush'.
- Place (6): hawi/hawine 'path', tame/temene grave'.
Reconstructed forms of PNs in proto-Arawa each have a single base form plus
suffix -ni for f and -ne for m. A number of phonological changes (set out in de-
tail in Dixon 1995) have given rise to the complexities of modern forms. For in-
stance mano-ni/'mano-ne > mani/mano 'arm' (where gender is shown by the final
vowel), atha-ni/atha-ne > ate/ete 'forehead' (where gender is shown by the first
vowel), and mowe-ni/'mowe-ne > mowe/mowe 'flower', athi-ni/athi-ne > ati/ati
'voice' (where the gender distinction has been lost). For about thirty PNs the ori-
ginal m suffix -ne is retained and this maybe the sole marker of gender, as in hagi-
ni/hagi-ne > hawi/hawine 'path', or an additional marker, as in mado-ni/mado-ne
mati/matone 'cord, rope'.
4 Noun phrase structure
Noun phrase structure is less complicated than predicate structure and, as a rule,
less of the possibilities are taken up. More than half the NPs in my corpus consist
of a single monomorphemic noun, whereas the average predicate includes about
five morphemes. Nevertheless, we do encounter longer NPs and there are consid-
erable structural possibilities, involving PNs and adjectives. The structure of the
NP is set out in Table 2.
The gender of an NP is determined by the head in all but two circumstances.
The first is that when/ana 'female' or maki 'male' is included in slot Bi, these deter-
mine the gender. For example, kerewe 'sloth' generally has f gender but to refer
specifically to a male sloth, maki may be added; the NP kerewe maki then has
m gender.