192 R. M. W. Dixon(20) [bani ehebotee tone]cs {ama-ka}
animal(m) big bone be-DECLARATiVE:m
'they are the bones of a big animal'
AnNP can include a sequence of PNs and any one of them may be modified by an
adjective. In (21) we get isg o- as NP head, followed by two PNs ('head' and 'hair'),
then adjective bite 'small', then another PN 'all':
(21) [o-tati kone bite nafi]s {sawa.wa
isg-headhair smalbfall be.white.REDUPLICATED
kawaha-ke}
FOR.A.WHILE-DECLARATIVE:f
'all of my little head hairs are getting white now'
The corpus does not include any example of an adjective in slot Bii and one in slot
Ci, within the same NP.
Although Jarawara has a small class of adjectives, two or even three can be used
together in an NP. In (8) we have botee 'old' followed by one 'another' modifying
fatara garden. Once, when the youths of my fieldwork village were having to use a
small children's ball for their football games, I offered to buy a proper football for
them, and was told to say, using an NP with adjectives jati 'new' andjokana 'real':
(22) [bora jati jokana]o {o-kanika-bana o-ke}
ball(m) new real isgA-buy-FUTURE:f isg-DECLARATiVE:f
'I'll buy a proper, new ball'
On another occasion, I walked five hours through the jungle to the main village of
the Jamamadi tribe with Motobi, a Jarawara friend; while with the Jamamadi, the
batteries on my small tape recorder ran out. A few days later Motobi noticed the
recorder in operation again and used a string of three adjectives after the head, in
surmising that I had inserted:
(23) [bija bite one jati]
battery(f) smalhf anothenf new
lit. 'new other small batteries'
When elicitation was directed to what might be the preferred order of adjectives,
it was consistently stated that both orders were equally acceptable, e.g. bija botee
howe ('battery old large-type') and bija howe botee are equally acceptable, as are
bite botee ('small old') or botee bite to describe a fruit.
(2) As copula complement. A copula clause can have just one argument, in copula
subject function, as in:
(24) [okoto]cs {ama-ke}
isgPOSSESSOR:daughter(f) be-DECLARATiVE:f
'I have a daughter' (lit. my daughter is)