Predication Strategies

This section will discuss predication as is particularly relevant to adjectives and other modifiers. A discussion of copular clauses is required.

The following is a table with a variety of verbs, both regular and stative, and some that lexically encode meanings prototypically adjectival (such as 'be a lot'):

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All tense and aspect inflections are available to stative verbs. For instance, the present progressive mexe V-aa can be used with any of the above.

Copular predication with ka- or ref

Ref is a verb that frequently acts as an existential copula, and works in both predicational and specificational clauses. Interestingly, because it is a stative verb it can itself become an adjective-type (that is, it can take -u suffix and appear in the same N-adj ordering relation as all other 'adjectives').

In the following example, ref acts as a regular verb with regular first person inflection:

 refaam oxa ʄiʄ na
 ‘I am a clever one’

However, in this example involving a wh-question ref is an adjective modifying the generic (that is, noun-class-indeterminate) wh-pronoun wum (see the section on Questions for more on wh-pronouns):

 wum ndefu we yaxigna
 ‘Which are the ones that are red?’

In the next example, it's clear that ref can take the full range of modifier morphology, including na-modification:

 fañiik fe refna ondeb	
 ‘the elephant that is small’

 kam ref oxa ʄiʄ na
 ‘I am someone who is clever’