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Re: Adjectives as Verbs

From:Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 7, 2004, 8:39
On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 17:40:50 +0100, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@...> wrote:
> If anyone has any I'd really like examples from as many different > languages as possible which have verbs fulfilling the role of adjectives
[...]
> I'm asking about adjectives as verbs because I decided not > to have a separate class of adjectives...)
If you wanted to be weird: Ebisedian also doesn't have adjectives, but replaces them not by verbs but by nouns, using its rather idiosyncratic system of cases to bind them to the noun described. For predicative adjectives, it uses stative sentences with no verbs, simply the "adjective" and the noun together in appropriate cases; for attributive adjectives, it uses a relative clause construction with a stative sentence in the relative clause ("the red house" would become "the house which is red"). I haven't been able to find out how comparatives and superlatives work with adjectives, though I believe it uses prepositions meaning "more" and "less" / "the most" and "the least". Relative clauses themselves work with two particles: one at the beginning, agreeing in number and case with the head noun's role in the main clause, and one at the end, agreeing in case with the head noun's role in the subordinate clause. Cheers, -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>