Re: THEORY: Deriving adjectives from nouns

>Last time I tried this, I ended up with 6 kinds:
>-a, plain vague adjective
>-o, genitive, really a noun used as adjective
>-ia before noun, active participle without object, "painting crew"
>-ua before noun, passive/inverse, "painted bridge"
>-ia after noun, takes object, "the crew painting the bridge"
>-ua after noun, "the bridge painted by the crew"

this looks to me like deriving adjectives from verbs. Demuan has this
aplenty, and is very productive in this fashion, although in some cases this
is really deriving nouns from verbs.

hax - (n) bridge
hake - (v) paint ; draw ; create something artistically on a 2-D surface

haketam - (n) painter
hakyam - (adj) painted
hakweng - (n) the act of painting
hakuu - (adj) capable of painting
huhakyu - (adj) capable of being painted

(xe) haketam - (some) painters ; a painting crew
(a) hakyam hax - (a) painted bridge
yi de twer hake ja hax - the people that are-painting the bridge
ja hax twer perhake ax yi haketam - the bridge that is-being-painted by the
painters

lama hax haketam - bridge painters (as a general class of people)
yi hax haketam - the bridge painting people (a specific known group)
ja hakyam hax - the painted bridge


'lama' gives a lot of people trouble. It is best translatesd as 'the general
concept of [noun]'. Verbs with different final consonants have different
variatiosn on these suffixes used to get teh adjectival forms.

Of course, hake may seem odd. But to Demuans, the idea behind painting a
bridge is to make it a thing of beauty. painting the Forth bridge in the
uniform grey it is would horrify them.

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Fabian
woohoo! 2 new words!