360 John Hajek
tion in Qiang. It appears plausible to suggest that these words may indeed constitute
a class of attributive-only adjectives. Semantically adjectival, this set of words (e.g.
ata 'fast', hama 'stealthy') cannot function as predicate (unlike verbs), but is able to
modify nouns directly (unlike adverbs, verbs, and most preposed adjectives). They
also share a number of features with Qiang's otherwise verb-like adjectives, which
help to distinguish both types from verbs. These include: (i) the ability adverbial-
ly to modify verbs and similar patterns of adverbial derivation; (2) nominalization
through juxtaposition with (in)definite markers; and (3) the use of the excessive
tsan 'too (much)' as well as the intensifies -wa, /can, and qmla 'very'. Wa and /can
appear mostly with adjectives whilst qmla almost exclusively so. Word order also
appears more flexible with attributive-only forms than with most verb-like adjec-
tives. The former are able to precede or follow the directly modified noun, although
pre-nominal position is relatively rare. Examples of each are given in (4a,b):
(4) (a) /can hama mi le:
INTENS stealthy person DEF:one:CL
'the very evasive man'
(b) /can mi hama le:
INTENS person stealthy DEF:one:CL
'the very evasive man'
Most verb-like adjectives described by LaPolla and Huang are only able to mod-
ify directly the noun in post-nominal position. They are otherwise obligatorily
relativized in pre-nominal position. However, a small number of verb-like adjec-
tives also have the ability directly to modify the noun in pre-nominal position, as
in (5).
(5) qddji teymi le:
naughty child DEF:one:CL
'the naughty child'
Unlike verb-like adjectives, attributive-only adjectives cannot be marked for the
excessive ('too much') with the suffix /-§/, nor appear in comparative construc-
tions. The latter omission appears to be syntactically conditioned, since the com-
parative construction in Qiang described in Chapter 13 focuses on the adjectival
quality located in the predicate. Attributive-only forms can, on the other hand, ap-
pear in superlative forms with prefix /tei-/, like all other adjectives, as in (6).
(6) mi tei-hama le:
person most-stealthy DEF:one:CL
'the most evasive man'
It was the absence of verb-like qualities that lead Sohn (for Korean) and LaPolla
and Huang (for Qiang) to avoid giving adjectival status to exclusively attributive
forms. However it is precisely this feature that strengthens the case for the exist-
ence of an independent adjective class in these and other languages—in particular