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'):
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 jij 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:
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:
faniik fe refna ondeb ‘the elephant that is small’
kam ref oxa jij na ‘I am someone who is clever’
