352 John Hajek
strongly categorial in favour of assignment of adjectives to the verb class (or more
rarely, to an independent verb-like class). The reverse does not apply to adjectives
appearing in copula complements: in no case where this occurs are adjectives as-
signed to the noun class. They are instead always given independent status.
As already noted, languages with exclusively predicative adjectives in major
classes are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region (North-East Ambae, Korean,
Lao, Qiang, Semelai, and partially Japanese and Manange). Japanese also has a
verb-like inflected class that functions in the predicate, alongside an additional
uninflected class that functions as copula complement. In Manange, which also
has two adjective classes, verb-like adjectives show mixed behaviour, conditioned
by aspect. They are predicative in the perfective, but appear in the copula comple-
ment when either imperfective or irrealis is marked. So-called simple adjectives
are never predicative, and usually appear with the copula. Both classes share the
additional feature of optional copula deletion in some contexts.
In Wolof, spoken in West Africa, adjectives and verbs are prototypically pre-
dicative, and nouns appear in copula complements, but the distinction is lost in
merged negative constructions which no longer distinguish the two clause types
(see Chapter 10). In Tariana, most adjectives are able to function either as predi-
cate heads (with tense aspect marking) or as copula complements. This type of
behaviour is cross-linguistically unusual, but is known to occur in a small number
of languages, such as Mundari (Wetzer 1992).
In all other languages described in this volume (Jarawara, Mam, Papantla
Totonac, Russian), adjectives appear only as copula complements (or in verbless
clauses). In Russian the so-called short form is considered to be more verb-like,
since it does not share the property that long forms and nouns do of appearing in
either nominative or instrumental case when in the copula complement.
Predicative function, where it is reported, is in all cases also associated with verb-
like TAM marking. This additional characteristic is always taken to be strong sup-
porting evidence in favour of classifying adjectives as fully verbal (with the partial
exceptions of verb-like adjectives in Japanese, Korean, and Manange). Verbs and
adjectives correspond most closely with each other in Wolof and Lao with respect
to the range of potential marking. No differences are reported in Lao and only a
very subtle difference can be described in Wolof, where the imperfective marker
tends to have a restricted habitual sense with adjectives but not verbs. However,
in all other languages with TAM marking on adjectives, restrictions of one kind
or another apply to adjectives that do not apply to verbs, providing a useful dis-
tinguishing criteria. In Qiang, for instance, adjectives cannot take the completive,
and in Tariana, adjectives, when predicative, cannot take the habitual-impersonal
-kana nor can they appear in prohibitive constructions.
In those languages in which adjectives appear in copula complements or verb-
less clauses, TAM marking on adjectives is absent or very rare. In Mam, adjec-
tives may take only the (im)perfective inflection -taq. All other TAM marking is
restricted to verbs.