10 Is there an Adjective Class in Wolof? 259(71) Xale hi dafa naawlmfet ba dee
child DBF 3Sg:VFOC ADj:ugly/ADj:pretty to die
"The child is terribly ugly/pretty'
(72) Dama-y Jang ba dee
isg:VFOC-iMP v:study to die
'I am studying terribly hard'
Finally, a few adjectives themselves maybe used within relative clauses as adverbs,
as shown in the examples in (73) and (74).
(73) Ndekki naa bu gaaw
have breakfast isg:PERF REL ADj:fast
'I ate breakfast fast'
(74) Lekk-al bu baax waay!
eat-2sg:iMPER REL ADj:good INT
'Eat well!'
Adjectives can form verbal or nominal compounds with nouns just as other verbs
can. Examples are given in (75) with the adjectives neex and xonq and the non-
adjectival verb begg.
(75) neex-deret 'be pleasant' ADj:nice + blood
xonq-nopp 'white person ADj:red + ear
begg-suukar 'species of ant' v:want/like + sugar
4.5. ADJECTIVAL VERBS AND LOANWORDS
Wolof has borrowed a great number of lexical items from other languages, in-
cluding Arabic, French, Portuguese, Pulaar, and English. Many are borrowed as
adjectives, regardless of their category in the original language, as evidenced in the
following examples:
(76) seytaane 'be deceitful/devil' (>Arabic 'devil) noun
feebar 'be sick/illness' (>Portuguese 'fever') noun
salte 'be dirty/dirt' (>French 'dirt') noun
kontar 'be against' (>French 'against') preposition
dakkor 'be in agreement' (>French 'in agreement') PP
nays 'nice' (>English 'nice') adjective
bulo 'blue' (>French 'blue') adjective
Urban Wolof, in particular, is characterized by extensive lexical borrowing from
French, including numerous adjectives. There is no extensive or systematic study
of French loans in Wolof, but in this author's fairly extensive corpus of phrases con-
taining such loanwords there is no readily apparent pattern to whether adjectives
are borrowed in masculine or feminine forms. Obviously, since gender of the French
type is not a functional category in Wolof, it does not influence the form in which the