Re: Languages without adjectives

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, 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.
Valdyan makes no difference between nouns and adjectives; the
distiction is purely semantic and usually expressed by word order.

   razie bruve  "a good-looking young person" (of either sex)
   bruve razie  "a young beauty"

Some words have mostly adjectival meaning (like _carin_ "spicy";
"spice" is _carisin_ "spicy things"), some mostly nominal meaning
(like _crys_ "snow", and all words in -sen "thing"), but in theory
any "noun" can be used both ways, and I don't mark them differently
in the lexicon.

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself) - http://valdyas.conlang.org (Valdyas)
          http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html (home)