15 What can we conclude? 3535 Negation and adjectives
Evidence presented in this volume suggests that languages rarely employ a nega-
tion strategy that uniquely distinguishes adjectives from other major word class-
es at clause level. Where adjectives appear in intransitive predicates, the negating
strategy is shared with verbs, e.g. North-East Ambae. Where they appear in cop-
ula complements or verbless clauses, there is no difference between adjectives and
nouns, e.g. Mam. In some languages, such as Papantla Totonac and Russian, the
same strategy is used to negate nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Partial exceptions to
this observation can, however, be found. In Japanese, for instance, verb-like inflect-
ed adjectives can be distinguished from positive verb forms, but also from negative
verb forms which appear with an additional negative affix. In Korean the general
negator an applies equally to verbs and adjectives but the alternative mos 'not/can-
not' is normally restricted only to verbs.
6 Comparative
All languages described in this volume, with the exception of Jarawara, have some
kind of comparative construction. The comparative appears to be a very strong
and cross-linguistically reliable diagnostic that allows us to separate adjectives
from both verbs and nouns. This is consistent with observations about the useful-
ness of this criterion made by Dixon in Chapter i. Only Japanese and Manange,
both with multiple, fully independent adjective classes, allow expression of the
comparative equally with nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Of the remaining eleven
languages in the sample, ten show evidence of some kind of comparative pattern,
function, or structure limited to adjectives.
Eight languages permit comparative constructions exclusively, or almost so,
with adjectives. There seems to be no correlation with verb-like or non-verb-like
behaviour of adjectives across these languages.
Some languages even have more than one type of comparative. Semelai has
two comparative constructions—both restricted to adjectives. The first is mor-
phologically complex, involving the comparative infix raf, and is limited to the
inner closed Class i set of eight dimension adjectives, e.g. jle? 'short' and J3<m?> lef
'shorter'. It also has an additional periphrastic construction borrowed from Malay
involving bbeh 'more', and applied to the open adjective Class 3 e.g. bbeh fihk (lit.
more good) 'better'. In Qiang, adjectives are optionally inherently comparative in
the absence of an explicit standard of comparison as in (la). Disambiguation is
possible, if required, by expansion, as seen in (ib, c):
(i) (a) the: tiwi (b) the: tiwi-wa (c) the: a-za tiwi
3sg tall 3sg tall-very 3sg one-CL tall
'He is tall/taller' 'He is very tall' 'He is a bit taller'
There is an additional, explicit, morphological comparative when the standard