7 The Small Adjective Class in Jarawara 187(6) [borokoo howe]cs {mee ama-ke}
pirarucu(m) large.type 3nsgCS be-DECLARATiVE:f
'they are large pirarucus' (lit. large pirarucu they are)
The forms bite/biti are also used as kinship nouns, for 'daughter/son of a 3sg pos-
sessor.
B. PHYSICAL PROPERTY
Bi. tati '(fruit) full-sized but not yet ripe and ready to eat'
E2. kini 'small, immature (fruit) which has not yet reached its full size'
Words for 'be ripe' are discussed in §5.4.
C. AGE
Ci. jati 'new, young' Ci. botee 'old'
There is a PN boteri/boteri bldness', derived from botee; this is discussed in §5.3.
And there is a non-inflecting verb jati -na- 'be alive, be raw (not sufficiently
cooked)' which is probably diachronically related to the adjective jati.
Botee can be used for an old person or old thing, and jati for a young person or
thing. The Jarawara believe that a new sun (bahf) comes into the sky each day, and
can describe this as bahijati 'new sun'. When one is referring to one's children 'my
younger daughter/son is described as okoto/okataojati. ('My elder daughter/son is
okoto/okatao tai.ti, involving the verb tai (to-)ha- 'go in front'.)
D. VALUE
There is no adjective good' in Jarawara, but instead a verb -amosa- 'be good' that
has very wide use. There are the following adjectives:
Di. towe 'bad'. This is recognized by the Jarawara but said to be 'really a Jamamadi
word'. They prefer to use the verb -hija- 'be bad, broken, ruined', which gen-
erally takes the negative affix -ra (redundantly, it appears), or else the verb
-amosa- 'be good' plus negative suffix, -ra.
Di. faja 'enough'. This has a wide range of meaning, e.g. 'slept enough', 'had enough
food', 'dug a hole deep enough to bury a corpse'. It is typically used to signal
the end of a story: faja ama (lit: 'enough be') 'that's enough' (and see (26)).
- jokana 'real, prototypical'. This can be used to describe the prototypical variety
of some plant or animal, e.g. fowa jokana is 'bitter manioc (Manihot esculenta)'
which is the staple food of the people. The Jarawara people's name for them-
selves is ee jokana, 'we, the real people' (lit. 'real us'), Jarawarabeing a term ap-
plied to them by the white people in the region.
E. QUALIFICATION and QUANTIFICATION
Ei. one/owa 'other, another'. This has two grammatical affiliations—it functions as
an adjective, modifying a noun, and also as a noun, in NP head slot.