Re: Terms of Endearment

On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:27:09 +0100 Chris Bates
<christopher.bates@...> writes:
>  And finally, adjectives used as nouns. Do many conlangs/natlangs
> allow
> free use of adjectives as nouns? English does but its restricted,
> there
> are only a few adjectives that don't sound wrong when used as nouns
> (ie the blond(e) the wise the old (the last two used only
> collectively)),
> whereas spanish and french seem to allow much freer use of
> adjectives of
> nouns (see ma petite above, and querido). Of course, this question
> has no meaning if a language has stative verbs instead of adjectives.
>  Sorry, the first thing led onto the other two lol...
> Chris.
-

In Rokbeigalmki you can use true adjectives (both describing ones and
intrinsic ones) as nouns, but not adjective-verbs.

I.e.:

|mald-a sudgoiyat-a uhzu-kihsht| = "the tall human left"
|sudgoiyat-a uhzu-kihsht| = "the tall (one) left"

and

|pyetki wajum sudtzrus umz| = "stone houses are strong"
|pyetkim sudtzrus umz| = "stone (things) are strong"

but not

|tzvikapik-a oolii-farit pu uzá| = "the gazelle which-will-jump is there"
*|oolii-farit-a pu uzá| = *"the which-will-jump is there"

Adjective-verbs also only have one form - they don't agree with their
nouns when it comes to number, gender, or definiteness, the way true
adjectives (of both kinds) have to when they follow their nouns.
|mald-A sudgoiyat-A|  vs.  |tzvikapik-A oolii-farit|


-Stephen (Steg)
 "People, when you bust out your fly party garb for school, you look
stoopid.  Not stupid, but worse.  Stoopid.  It's the difference between
stinky and stanky.  It's REALLY bad."
     -Nick Zeckets, Arizona Daily Wildcat, 8/30/2001