10 Is there an Adjective Class in Wolof? 243(1) xale bu rafet
child REL pretty
'a pretty child'
(2) xale bu xam
child REL know
'a child who knows'
When the two phrases occur in definite form there is a difference in the placement
of the definite article. With adjectival verbs it occurs at the end of the noun phrase,
while with non-adjectival verbs it occurs in conjunction with the relativizer as the
examples in (3)-(5) illustrate.
(3) xale bu rafet hi
child REL pretty DBF
'the pretty child'
(4) xale hi xam
child REL:DEF know
'the child who knows'
(5) xale hi rafet
xale bu xam hi
While Creissels' observations support the establishment of an adjective class, a
more thorough investigation into such constructions reveals that as soon as an
adjective enters into more complex morphological or syntactic structures via the
addition of, say, a tense morpheme, an adverb, or a second argument, it reverts to
canonical verbal behaviour in relative clauses. Moreover, there is some variation
among Wolof speakers as to which lexical items pattern as adjectives and which as
verbs. The goal of this chapter is to lay out the facts of Wolof in order to determine
whether or not there is a class of words that is distinct from verbs and that can be
said to comprise an adjective class. I conclude that although it is possible to posit
an adjective class in Wolof based on the behaviour of relative clauses, as in Lao (see
Enfield, Ch. 14), the class of adjectives is best characterized as a sub-class of verbs.
Throughout this chapter adjectival verbs will none the less be referred to as adjec-
tives for ease of exposition.
the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University in August 2002, especially Bob
Dixon, Sasha Aikhenvald, John Hajek, and Felix Ameka, for their insightful discussions of many of
the issues raised in this chapter. I am likewise grateful to Denis Creissels for pointing the way to-
wards distinguishing an adjective class in Wolof as I was beginning this project. Any inaccuracies or
shortcomings in the analysis are strictly my own. Standard Wolof orthography, described in Fal, San-
tos, and Doneux (1990), is used throughout this chapter. An acute accent over a vowel (as in tey) in-
dicates that the vowel is [+ATR], a grave accent (as injang) indicates a semi-long vowel, the symbol e
is equivalent to schwa. Long vowels are written as a sequence of two vowels, and marked for [+ATR]
only on the first; geminates are written as a sequence of two consonants; and prenasalized stops are
written as a nasal + consonant sequence (as in njool).