24 R. M. W. Dixon
conditions). Thus, while the nounyam 'man' can only occur with bayi,yibi 'woman
only with balan, etc., an adjective such as midi 'small' can occur with all four noun
markers, as in (i8a-d).
However, there is a handful of 'hybrid' nouns that can take either masculine or
feminine markers; these include bayi/balan jaja 'male/female baby' and bayi/balan
bimu 'father's older brother/sister'. And while adjectives such as midi 'small' can
modify any noun, there are adjectives which—by virtue of their meaning—may
only modify a noun which has human reference; for example, wugija generous,
always sharing things' andjilbay 'experienced/expert at some task'. There are thus
a few nouns which can occur with either masculine or feminine noun marker, and
a few adjectives which are restricted to masculine and feminine markers. That is,
while noun class co-occurrence is a pretty good criterion for distinguishing nouns
and adjectives in Dyirbal, it is not perfect. Other criteria need to be brought in to
deal with words like jaja, bimu, wugija, andjilbay.
In some languages only some adjectives may take gender or noun class mark-
ing. This applies in Swahili, where the adjective class has two sub-classes. One sub-
class consists of about fifty native roots which take the concordial prefix of the
noun they modify; the other sub-class involves a score or so of borrowed adjectives
(mostly from Arabic) which do not take the prefixes. However, the sub-classes are
linked by all their members sharing other grammatical properties.
In Jarawara, some inalienably possessed nouns and some adjectives show a gen-
der distinction. However, the rules for gender agreement within an NP are differ-
ent for the two word classes. Following a non-singular ist or 2nd person pronoun
as head of an NP, plus a possessed noun, a further possessed noun will be in mas-
culine form while an adjective shows feminine form—see (34-6) in Chapter 7.
The gender/noun class distinction spans morphology and syntax. A similar crit-
erion is provided by classifiers; generally, an adjective may occur with a larger set
of classifiers than may a noun (potentially, an adjective may occur with all classifi-
ers, while a noun maybe limited to one, or to just a few). (See Dixon 1977^: 122 on
the Australian language Yidin.)
A survey of the literature shows a number of different kinds of morphological
differences between nouns and adjectives. Only a noun may take possessive affixes,
in Finnish and in Hungarian, and also in the Papuan language Alamblak (Bruce
1984: 74 provides a most useful table of the various morphological differences
between adjectives and the other word classes in Alamblak).
Typically, adjectives will accept only a subset of the affixes available to nouns.
Arnott (1970: 78-130) states that in Fula (Atlantic/Niger-Congo) an adjective takes
all noun class suffixes but a noun will only take some, whereas nouns take all the
remaining nominal suffixes, while adjectives just accept a selection of them (for
example, singular -wo and plural -fie are confined to nouns).
In Maasai (Tucker and Mpaayei 1955: 3-13), a noun—as head of an NP—inflects
for gender and number, while an adjective—as modifier—inflects only for number.
But if the head noun is omitted, so that the NP consists just of an adjective, then