Adjective Classes - A Cross-Linguistic Typology

7 The Small Adjective Class in Jarawara 195

(35) [ee taboro one] and not *[ee taboro owa]
insg.incpossESSOR village:m other:f other:m
'our other village'

(36) [ee feme bite] and not * [ee feme b
insg.incpossESSOR footm smalbf smalbm
'our small feet'

Ifone/owa and bite/biti were PNs, they would be in m form in these NPs. Examples
(35-6) point to a crucial difference between the gender assignment for PNs and for
adjectives within an NP. That for PNs is complex, and is set out in Table 4. That for
adjectives is simple. Just as a pronoun in pivot function requires f agreement with-
in the predicate, so it requires f agreement on a modifying adjective within its NP
(whether or not a PN intervenes between pronominal head and adjective).
This provides further support for the analysis pursued here (and argued for in
some detail in Dixon looob), that in an NP such as o-mano 'my arm' or ee teme 'our
feet', it is the pronominal possessor (here o- and ee) which is NP head. Both mano
and teme are in m form and if they were head we should expect a following adjec-
tive to be in m form. The adjective is actually in f form, this being determined by
the pronominal head of the NP.

(D) Ordering within a sequence of adjectives or of PNs. We mentioned that if an NP
includes more than one adjective, these may occur in any order with no appar-
ent difference in meaning. In contrast, PNs generally occur in a fixed order, which
is semantically determined. For example, fowa bete maho (manioc(m) rotten:m
smell:m) 'the smell of rotten manioc'.
However, this is a less sharp criterion than (A-C). There can occasionally be flu-
idity in the ordering of PNs. For example, we have heard fowa maho bete. Strictly
speaking, this should mean 'the rotten smell of manioc', implying that all manioc
has a bad smell. But all manioc does not have a bad smell and this piece of com-
mon knowledge ensures that fowa maho bete is understood as 'the smell of rotting
manioc', despite the liberty which a speaker took with the ordering of PNs in this
instance.
Table 6 summarizes the criteria which serve to distinguish adjectives from PNs.
Although the distinction between PNs and adjectives is fairly clear, it is not abso-
lutely clean-cut. We have found hinita 'empty, alone' used like an adjective in most

TABLE 6. Grammatical differences between adjectives and possessed nouns

Adjectives Possessed nouns

A
B
C

D

followed by mee in NP

functions alone as copula complement

gender when following PN, after i/2nsg pronoun

as NP head

order within sequence

yes

yes

f

free

no

no

m

generally fixed