10 Is there an Adjective Class in Wolof? 257meaning when applied to humans. Members of this class include, among others,
nooy 'soft', deger 'hard, sturdy' (also resilient, of a person), tooy 'wet', wow 'dry', set
'clean, tilim 'dirty', tang 'hot', sedd cold', diis 'heavy', woyo/'light' (weight), le.nde.rn
'dark',/o?m 'sour', lewet 'sweet', wex 'bitter', neb 'rotten, enn 'fermented' (of farina-
ceous substances), feex 'cool', gakk 'stained', guus 'damp'. On the other hand, the
equivalent of the English adjective 'strong' in Wolof is rendered by the phrase am
doole 'have strength'.
There is also quite a large set of adjectives that denote CORPOREAL PROPER-
TIES, many of which can also function as non-adjectival verbs such as xees 'pale-
skinned', wopp sick', sonn 'tired', bori 'have a nosebleed', booy 'have a rash', der 'stutter',
dong 'tremble', faxaj 'have a sprain', fer 'have indigestion', fot 'have something stuck
in one's throat', /a/an 'paralysed in the legs', lapp 'thin and sickly', patt 'one-eyed',
regg 'be satisfied after eating', req 'fractured', taay 'plump', xanq 'completely bald',
etc. There are also numerous adjectives that denote illness (sibbiru 'have malaria',
xarnenn 'have bilharziosis', ramm 'have scabies', rjas 'have the measles', rjappati 'have
chickenpox', soj 'have a cold', etc.) but the noun for the illness is identical in form, so
it is difficult to say whether or not they are derived. Likewise, there is a set of adjec-
tives that denote BODILY DEFECTS or diseases that are identical to the noun for the
person who suffers from the illness or defect (gumba 'be blind/blind person;gaana
'have leprosy/leper'; etc.)
Adjectives denoting HUMAN PROPENSITY are also numerous. This semantic
type includes words such as muus 'clever', nay 'miserly', rus 'ashamed', soxor 'mean,
cruel', anaan 'jealous', aay 'unkind', hew 'haughty', beg 'happy', beqet 'fearful', do/'mad',
giif'calm, lemb 'effeminate', njaxlaf'vivacious, sawar 'hard-working', soo/'mischie-
vous', tabe generous', te 'unmanageable', etc. The equivalent of the English adjective
'intelligent', on the other hand, is rendered in Wolof by the expression am xel 'have
mind/intelligence'.
In the semantic category of SPEED we findyeex 'slow' andgaaw 'fast', and for DIF-
FICULTY there are jafe 'difficult, hard/expensive' and yomb 'easy/inexpensive'. The
adjectives niroo 'resemble' and wuute 'differ from' fall within the semantic category
of SIMILARITY, and the category of QUANTIFICATION is represented by day 'to be
sufficient' and bari 'be numerous, much'. With regard to POSITION, there are the
adjectives jege 'near' and sore 'far', but high and low are verbs derived from nouns,
and other positions, such as left, right, north, south, etc., are nominals.
4.3. COMPARATIVES
Adjectives follow the same pattern of comparative formation as other verbs by
using the verb gen 'to be better, to be more, to surpass'. Gen may take a human
nominal complement,^8 as in (65), but when it takes a verbal complement it takes
the suffix /-«/ that connects auxiliaries and main verbs, as in (66) and (67).(^8) The verb epp 'to be/have more' also takes nominal complements, e.g. Ibu moo ko epp xel 'Ibou is
more intelligent than him' [xel 'intelligence'], but not verbal ones.