Re: Deep Water: Re- Conlanging

>Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> pun ya.liris añ.nuro sawu.i
>> if 3s.fear NOM.deep water.GEN
>
>Interesting to mark 'water' (the noun) with genitive and
>'deep' (the adjective) with nominative. How come? Are
>adjectives considered nouns in Kash? Or should it
>really be the other way around, i.e. NOM.water deep.GEN?
>Or what *is* the relationship between nouns and adjectives
>in Kash?
My guess is that "añ.nuro" is a nominalised adjective,
so the construction is literally "depth of water".  (I seem to
remember that Kash, like the Austronesian languages it's
partially modelled after, nominalises things quite productively.)

But if "añ.nuro" is in fact an adjective, and if that adjective
is in fact the head of the phrase, while the noun is a dependent,
then this construction is not unlike one of the ways of doing
adverbial modification in Tokana:  The stative verb (which
denotes the manner in which the action is carried out) is
the main verb of the phrase, and bears tense marking, while
the eventive verb (which denotes the action itself) is treated
as the head of a dependent clause:

   Ne  Tsion  klota  pentat
   the.ABS  John  be.quick  run.DEP
   "John runs quickly"

DEP = the dependent suffix, used when the verb is
in a complement clause, relative clause, etc..

This construction is literally something like "John (is
such that) (it) is quick that (he) runs", or "John (is
such that) (his) running is quick", or "John is quick to
run".

Matt.