Re: Languages without adjectives

Fredrik Ekman wrote:

>Some time ago I read an article about languages which mentioned in passing
>that some languages have no or few adjectives, using (if I understood the
>article correctly) nouns and verbs(?) for the same purposes.
One interesting way of having descriptive modifiers which I have
found is by deriving nouns from verbal roots with adjective-like
meanings (e.g. 'be big') and using these derived nouns to form
compounds. At the same time, the derivation is sensitive to
nominal classes.

Here is something below that is inspired from what I have read on
Papuan languages. Say the following five nominal classes exist in a
language (there are bound to be much more than this though, but I'm
sticking to five for the sake of keeping examples simple):

Animate
   I   masculine
   II  feminine
   III birds
   IV  sprouts
   V   man-made structures

The following suffixes are used to derive nouns from adjectives:

Class  Singular      Plural
   I   -(u/w)mpt     -(u/w)mknaw
   II  -(i/y)mpt     -(i/y)mknay
   III -mpt          -mkna
   IV  -plt          -plkna
   V   -klapt        -klapkna

If we use them with plam 'be red' or wa 'be big', we get:

Class  Singular                     Plural
   I   plamumpt  'red man'          plamumknaw  'red men'
       wawmpt    'big man'          wawmknaw    'big men'
   II  plamimpt  'red woman'        plamimknay  'red women'
       waympt    'big woman'        waymknay    'big women'
   III plammpt   'red bird'         plammkna    'red birds'
       wampt     'big bird'         wamkna      'big birds'
   IV  plamplt   'red sprout'       plamplkna   'red sprouts'
       waplt     'big sprout'       waplkna     'big sprouts'
   V   plamklapt 'red building'     plamklapkna 'red buildings'
       waklapt   'big building'     waklapkna   'big buildings'

By using the derived nouns given above, I would use them together
with another noun to form a compound, e.g.:

1) pantuplamumpt pantuwawmptlk
   pantu  plam -umpt             pantu  wa  -wmpt             -lk
   war    red -singular:CLASS.I  war    big -singular:CLASS.I also
   literally: 'war-man who is red and who is also a war-man who is big'
   translation: 'big red warrior'

2) tawawawmpt
   tawa    wa -wmpt
   marriage big -singular:CLASS.II
   literally: 'marriage-woman who is big'
   translation: 'big wife'

3) yaklplamplkna
   yakl plam -plkna
   tree  red-plural:CLASS.IV
   literally: 'tree-sprouts that are red'
   translation: 'red tree flowers'

As you can see though, the language is extremely morphologically
complicated - something not unusual in languages with a complex
noun class system. This was just an example, but I hope this
inspires you.

-kristian- 8)