2 R.M.W. Dixon
human language: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Each has (a) a prototypical concep-
tual basis; and (b) prototypical grammatical function(s).
The recognition of word classes in a language must be on the basis of inter-
nal grammatical criteria for that language. Certain types of criteria recur, but the
exact justification for a class is particular to each language. For example, in Latin a
noun inflects for number and case (and has an inherent gender, shown by the case/
number allomorphs that it takes). In English there are no morphological processes
which apply for all nouns (only some nouns take plural marking); here a defining
criterion is syntactic—a noun may immediately follow an article and need not be
followed by any other item (this is to distinguish nouns from adjectives).
A given concept may relate to different word classes in different languages. For
example, the idea of 'needing to eat', is expressed
(a) by the adjective namir in Dyirbal;
(b) by the noun hunger in English, and by the nounfaim in French;
(c) by the verb esurio in Latin, and by the verb -fimi- in Jarawara.
(Note that if the basic form is a noun or a verb, there may be a commonly-used
derived adjective, such as hungry in English and esuriens in Latin. French has a
derived adjective with rather specialized meaning, famelique, 'starving, famished'.
However, there is no adjectival derivation from -fimi- in Jarawara.)
Throughout this chapter I am looking at the organization of underlying lexical
roots into word classes. In every language there are some morphological processes
deriving stems of one word class from roots of another class (for example, verb
lengthen from noun length which in turn comes from adjective root long in Eng-
lish). In some languages an adjective class may have a limited number of mono-
morphemic forms, but can be extended almost indefinitely by derivations based
on nouns and verbs. I am, for the most part, concerned just with morphologically
simple roots, not with derived stems.
Further examples of a given concept being coded into varying word classes
include:
(a) kin terms such as 'mother' and 'father' are nouns in most languages but verbs
('be mother of and 'be father of) in others (including the Yuman languages
of southern California);
(b) the number 'two' is an adjective in many languages but a verb in others (for ex-
ample, -fama- in Jarawara);
(c) the concept 'beauty' is a noun in some languages (including English) but a verb
in others (for example totoka in Fijian).
It will be seen that a lexical root cannot be assigned to a word class on the basis of
its meaning. If this were so, then 'hunger/(be) hungry', '(be) mother (of)', '(be) two',
and 'beauty/(be) beautiful' would relate to the same class in every language, which
they do not.