Adjectival constructions in Bodo and Tibeto-Burman

Abstract

Since the initial work of Dixon (1977, 1982), it has been widely recognized that adjective categories cross-linguistically tend to be strongly linked by morphosyntactic behavior to either the noun or verb category, to the point that in many languages it is not clear that a distinct adjective category can be established. In Sinitic and Southeast Asian languages, for example, adjective functions are carried out by words which can be analyzed as a subcategory of verbs, while in Indo-European and Uralic languages adjectives, while identifiable as a distinct category, have a great deal in common with nouns. The oldest and commonest pattern in Tibeto-Burman languages is a category of stative or change-of-state verbs used as predicates, and nominalized to function as modifiers. In Bodo there are two ways in which we could define an Adjective2 category. There is a broad category of words which occur as predicates denoting a quality of the referent of the subject noun phrase, and as modifiers of head nouns, and in the latter function are never marked as genitive. Only this and the ability to combine with certain intensifiers distinguishes these Adjectives from nouns. But within this category is a smaller set of words derived from stative verbs by an otherwise obsolete nominalizing construction.