5 Adjectives in Mam 145(81) kyaqky'ekj 'strong, potent'
kyaqmaqmaj 'stuttering'
kyaqtz'umtz'aj 'hard, of wood'
kyaqtzeky'tzaj 'hard, of earth'
kyaqtziintzan 'hard, strong'
saqtz'utz'ub' 'somewhat humid, like wood, clothes'
There are also the compounds formed with words for 'big' or 'small' and body parts
or relational nouns to indicate additional dimensions:
(82) nee' tqan 'short'
nee' t-xee' 'shallow'
nim twitz 'wide'
matiij tqan 'long'
Another source for adjectives is borrowed words. The majority of these come from
Spanish. Common borrowed adjectives include galaan/walaan 'handsome', boniit
'nice, pretty', konteent 'contented, happy', look 'crazy', toont 'silly, stupid', kabaal 'exact',
and lijeer 'smart'. A fair proportion of these adjectives have to do with HUMAN PRO-
PENSITY and VALUE, perhaps because these are classes that are somewhat under-
represented in Mam. The borrowed adjectives are very frequently used words in
Spanish, in any case.
4 Conclusions
Although adjectives share a few characteristics with nouns, verbs, or position-
als, they are a separate class. Adjectives can be the heads of stative predicates, like
nouns. One of their principal derivations, the abstract noun, can also be applied to
noun roots, but rarely. Although adjectives occur without nouns in an NP, when
they do so they are anaphors. Adjectives can be modified by an attenuator and an
intensifier that also function adverbially to modify verbs. When they function as
the heads of statives, they can take the (im)perfective marker -taq, as can verbs.
The positional adjective functions as the head of a stative, as do adjectives.
However, adjectives are clearly distinct from all of these classes in a number of
ways. First of all, they take special derivation which, with the exception of the few
nouns that also take the abstract noun derivation, is unique to the class. Second,
they do not take the characteristic derivations of positionals or verbs, nor do they
take possessive (Set A) markers or tense/aspect/mood inflections. Nouns cannot
modify other nouns directly, except for measures which must be accompanied by
numbers, or possessors which are cross-referenced on the noun with Set A mark-
ers, but adjectives do modify nouns directly. Positional adjectives can only be used
predicatively, while true adjectives can be used both predicatively and attributively.
Verbs are heads of verbal predicates, while adjectives are heads of stative predi-
cates and complements of existential predicates.