Modifying with Nouns

Nouns can themselves modify nouns in syntactic patterns similar to those observed by certain adjectives.

<gl id="ex1" fontsize=12> \gll o- ɓiy o- saf -u suukar sg-Cl fruit Agr taste Adj sugar \trans sweet fruit (lit. sugar-tasting fruit) </gl>

<gl id="ex2" fontsize=12> \gll ndawal saf -u kaane meat taste Adj hot-pepper \trans spicy meat (lit. hot-pepper-tasting meat) </gl>

<gl id="ex3" fontsize=12> \gll o- tew o- ʄoola o- mos -u oxe sg-Cl Agr Jola Agr beautiful Adj Det \trans the beautiful Jola girl </gl>

<gl id="ex4" fontsize=12> \gll xa- degit xa- ɗaq xa- ʃokolaat pl-Cl piece Agr two Agr chocolate \trans Two pieces of chocolate. </gl>

<gl id="ex5" fontsize=12> \gll xa- degit xa- ʃokolaat xa- ɗaq pl-Cl piece Agr chocolate Agr two \trans Two pieces of chocolate. </gl>

In (1) and (2), the adjective is 'be tasting like' and the nouns are suukar 'sugar' and kaane 'hot pepper'. In the third and fourth examples, the noun is 'Jola person', which is used to describe the origins of the girl. The nouns here behave like adjectives in their relative positioning near the head, and agreement. However, they do not assume the -u suffix, and as such they pattern like numbers in not behaving like stative verbs. This ability to be suffixed with -u or not marks a distinction between two types of modifiers: verbs and stative verbs versus nouns and numerals.

Arguably, as discussed in the section on Special Adjectives, adjectives like ran 'white' and ɓaal 'black' are in fact nouns. For this reason, they cannot themselves be used with the -u adjective suffix, but must be derived with a causative suffix to (i.e., caused whiteness, caused blackness) in order to do so.

*ofiid oranu le
 ofiid orangu le
 'the white butterfly'

Once derived with a causal morpheme, the stative verb 'to be white' is formed; ran, thus, on its own is not a stative verb. We may call them either true adjectives, or we may call them nouns. These actually being nouns may also explain why the following is ruled out: *ofiid ole ran na. With na-modification, only adjectives can modify na, since na is a pronominal form.

Back to: Modification Strategies

--Oana 05:54, 17 May 2013 (UTC)