228 Ho-min Sohn
considerable morphosyntactic differences between verbs and adjectives too, as
summarized in Table i and elaborated in §3.1 and §3.2.
3.1. MORPHOLOGICAL PROPERTIES
3.1.1. Within the predicate slotOne feature shared by verbs and adjectives is that all the members of both classes
are bound and cannot occur without a clause-type ender. Furthermore, both verbs
and adjectives share all the major inflectional categories within the predicate slot:
subject honorific, tense/aspect (past/perfect, non-past), modal (volition/conjec-
ture), addressee honorific, mood (indicative, retrospective, requestive), and clause-
type (declarative, interrogative, prepositive, imperative, promissive, admonitive),
as illustrated in (6) where all these categories are manifested.
(6) Verb: alh-usi-ess-keyss-sup-ni-ta
be.ill-SH-PPS-MD-AH-IN-DC
'(a senior person) must have fallen ill'
Adjective: coh-usi-ess-keyss-sup-ni-ta
happy-SH-PPS-MD-AH-IN-DC
'(a senior person) must have been happy'
There are, however, morphological criteria by which an adjective can be distin-
guished from a verb, in that different inflectional allomorphs are attached to them.
The most clear-cut difference appears in plain-level non-past indicative forms.^4 If
the stem takes the suffix -nun (after a consonant-final stem) or -n (after a vowel-
final stem), it is a verb. If the stem takes a ZERO suffix, it is an adjective.
(7) plain subject honorific
Verb: alh-nun-ta alh-usi-n-ta '(someone) is ill'
be.ill-iN-DC be.ill-SH-iN-DC
ka-n-ta ka-si-n-ta '(someone) goes'
gO-IN-DC gO-SH-IN-DC
Adjective: coh-ta coh-usi-ta '(someone) is good'
good-DC good-SH-DC
khu-ta khu-si-ta '(someone) is big'
big-DC big-SH-oc
Notice that extension of the stem to include the subject honorific suffix -(u)si does
not affect the appearance of the indicative suffix in verbs. This time, -nun changes
to -n because now the stem is vowel-final. All other inflectional suffixes obliterate
the verb-adjective distinction, as in ka-(si-)keyss-ta 'may go' vs. khu-(si-)keyss-ta
'maybe big' and ka-(si-)ni? 'does (he) go?' vs. khu-(si-)ni? 'is (he) big?'
(^4) The plain-level is the lowest among six speech levels, which is typically used to a child address-
ee. It is also used to one's own child or grandchild, younger sibling, school junior, and close friend, as
well as in general writings such as articles, academic papers, newspapers, and literary works.