Re: adj.

Marcus Smith wrote:
>
> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> >Mario Bonassin wrote:
> > >
> > > I have a question about adjectives that one among you may have the
> > > answer to.  I was planing on having all adj. be form the verb class.
> > > I know that they should conjugate like verbs but should I have an
> > > extra affix to show its an adj.
> >
> >No need to.  There could be a derivative suffix that makes adjectives
> >out of other words.
>
> Telek does not distinguish between adjectives and verbs in any
> way.  Phrases like "a red car" would be literally translated as "a car
> which is red" as a perfect parallel with "a car that crashed".
In Nur-ellen, adjectives behave like nouns (agreeing in case and number)
in attributive position, but like verbs (inflecting for tense) in
predicative position.  For example, "the red car" is

i   automobil garn
the OBJ.car   OBJ.red

(_automobil_, being inanimate, is always in objective case)

while "The car is red" is morphologically the same (present tense is
zero, predicative adjectives are always in objective case, and so is
the subject as they are treated like non-active verbs).
"The car was red" translates as:

I   automobil garnent.
the OBJ.car   OBJ.red-PAST

The same holds for predicative *nouns*:

Dhavid    arj`nent       e        Izrael
OBJ.David OBJ.king-PAST GEN.PART OBJ.Israel
"David was king of Israel."

All this is perhaps understood best as an enclitic zero copula that is
inflected for tense ;-)

Jörg.