Adjective Classes - A Cross-Linguistic Typology

52 Anthony E. Backhouse

TABLE i.

Inflected adject:live Verb

TABLE 2.

Inflected adjective Verb

Formal

Negative

Causative

Passive/Adversative

Potential

naga-i-desu

naga-ku na-i

naga-ku suru

oki-masu

oki-na-i

oki-sase-ru

oki-rare-ru

oki-rare-rul oki-re-ru

irregular inflected adjective: the basic VALUE term yoi good, okay' has the less for-
mal (and more frequent) nonpast alternant ii, with the suppletive stem i-.)
Comparative paradigms for basic grammatical derivations are given in Table 2
(all forms are non-past). While these categories are all morphologically derived for
verbs, with the exception of formal they are rendered syntactically, or are absent,
with inflected adjectives.
As Table 2 shows, the derived nonpast negative form of verbs resembles the non-
past form of inflected adjectives. The full (plain) inflectional paradigms for both are
presented in Table 3. Although they have an additional alternant in the derived for-
mal nonpast, negative forms of verbs are morphosyntactically very close to inflected
adjectives (some verbs also lack negative imperative and naide-conjunctive forms),
and many linguists (for example, Bloch 1946) have classified them as such.^5

such as naru 'become'; (c) non-finite element in analytic negative and emphatic constructions. Other
terms are used, including 'Adverbial' since adverbs have the same form. Unlike the above conjunctive
functions, however, adverbs are not universally present (Martin 1975:180) and, where they are, they
are sometimes semantically unpredictable; they are treated as lexical derivatives here.

(^5) As noted in Bloch (1946), inflected adjectives and negative verb forms differ phonologically in
terms of accentual behaviour. Most clearly, in the plain non-past form, tonic adjectives are accented
on the penult (cf nagai), tonic verbs on the antepenult (cf okinai).
Non-past naga-i 'long' oki-ru 'get up'
Conjunctive naga-ku oki
Past naga-katta oki-ta
Provisional naga-kereba oki-reba
te-conjunctive naga-kute oki-te
Conditional naga-kattara oki-tara
Representative naga-kattari oki-tari
Imperative — oki-ro
Hortative — oki-yoo