Nominal Modifiers
Adjectival modifiers agree with the nouns they modify in two ways: in terms of the noun class determiner and the appropriate consonant mutation. With diminutive and augmentative forms of nouns the noun class changes, and the adjective agreement follows on the basis of the new class. The following is a table sampling nouns across all noun classes and the ways in which they are modified, where the last two items on the list represent diminutive and augmentative noun classes.
| Sg.Pl Class | Example (sg) | English | Example (pl) | English | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ox.w | okiin opaax oxe | the good person | wiin faax we | the good people | |
| ox.w | otew omosu xe | the beautiful woman | rew mosu we | the beautiful women | |
| al.ak | be light | ajelefa | it is light | ||
| ɗay | be happy | ɗayaam | I am happy | ||
| fuux | be angry | afuuxa | he was / they were angry | ||
| tayil | be lazy | atayil'a | he is / the are lazy | ||
| may | be a lot | amaya fut | is very full | ||
| amaya haalis | he is rich |
The adjective agrees for number in the form of initial consonant alternation for some adjectives for which this is possible (e.g, it is not possible with mosu ‘beautiful’ but possible with farʄu ‘ugly’). Whether or not an adjective which has the ability to undergo this alternation actually does so seems to be dependend on the noun class of the noun it modifies, as the items in (4) show with the adjective xoƈu ‘thin’:
Above, each noun belongs to a different class, and in each case the adjective stem-initial consonant engages in a different alternation pattern: q-x, x-x, and nq-q. The initial consonant on the adjective, then, is first conditioned by the noun class of the noun it modifies, determining its singula form, and then undergoes an additional mutation from singular to plural forms.
From the table above, we see that the noun class can predict what kind CM an adjective will undergo. For instance, the adjective faax ‘good’ undergoes a noun class CM in okiin opaax oxe involving a similar despirantization (f-p) as occurs for the adjective xoƈu in otew oqoƈu we (x-q), and the nouns in both of these phrases are from the person class. In a change from singular to plural for this class, there is a reversal (p-f and q-x, for faak and xoƈu, respectively). Similarly, in the l-x noun class, the adjective xoƈu undegoes no CM when ‘butterfly’ is modified, and farʄu and fuuxu ‘angry’ also undego no CM when modifying onan ‘rumor’ and obox ‘dog’, respectively. But they all become despirantized in the change from singular to plural: x-q, f-p and f-p, respectively.
One clear exception to the agreement pattern whereby agreement occurs by the FV of the noun is in the f-k noun class, e.g. fañiik 'elephant'. In this class, the agreeing initial morpheme is fa whereas it should technically be Ø, since f is part of the root itself and not a classifier. We see that this happens with ataaya as well, even though the initial consonant is different. It is unclear why this noun class behaves differently. More noun-adjective elicitations are needed for more nouns in this class to see if this agreement phenomenon is ubiquitous in the class, or if we just hit upon a couple of exceptions.
From these examples, it is clear that adjective morphophonology is dependent upon noun class morphophonology.
Oana 21:59, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
