4.1.2 ‘Adjectives’ Are Verbs, or Are Verb-Like
In some languages, an adjective class will be entirely distinct from both the noun and verb classes. But in many languages the adjective class will either be noun-like or verb-like, meaning that adjectives will resemble either nouns or verbs in terms of their grammatical behaviours. In English, adjectives happen to be distinct in their grammatical behaviour from both nouns and verbs. In a noun-like adjective language (such as Latin), the adjective ‘old’ might be rendered noun-like as, roughly, ‘an old one’, while in a verb-like adjective language, such as Sedang (Smith Reference Smith1979: 84), or any other MSEA language, it might be rendered verb-like as, roughly, ‘to be old’. Adjectives in MSEA languages are clear examples of the verb-like type, meaning that they show many of the same basic grammatical behaviours that verbs do (Comrie Reference Comrie and Kullavanijaya2007: 41).
Post (Reference Post2008) investigates the status of the adjective concept in Thai. He highlights the analyst’s role in determining word-class categories, through making useful generalizations about the data rather than discovering an objectively privileged taxonomic organization in the language. His data show that ‘adjectives’ may be understood not as a separate word class in Thai, but as a semantically defined subset of verbs (‘property concept’ words; Dixon Reference Dixon2010). In Thai, a verb, such as dəən ‘walk’, acts as a predicate without any marking (Post Reference Post2008: 343):
By contrast, if a noun, such as phráʔ ‘monk’, is to be used as a predication, it must appear as the complement of a copula verb (Post Reference Post2008: 343):
Now consider the behaviour of the property concept word dii ‘good’. The following examples show that dii ‘good’ follows the same pattern of grammatical behaviour as the verb dəən ‘walk’, and not that of the noun phráʔ ‘monk’:
Another grammatical property – the use of the relativizer thîi – similarly distinguishes nouns from verbs, where dəən ‘walk’ is joined to a nominal head using the relativizer, while a noun must, again, be hosted by a verb, here the copula pen:
Again, the property concept word dii ‘good’ shows the same pattern of grammatical behaviour as the verb dəən ‘walk’, in contrast from the noun phráʔ ‘monk’:
Post (Reference Post2008) describes numerous further grammatical tests, including negation and aspect marking, showing that property concept words in Thai can be grouped together with words denoting actions rather than words denoting things.
Upon closer examination, Post shows that sub-classes of verbs can be distinguished from each other, and this can form the basis of an argument that adjectives are indeed a distinct class from (or at least a sub-class of) verbs in Thai. Post (Reference Post2008: 345) notes that a property concept like sǔuŋ ‘tall’ can enter into a comparative construction, while processes or actions like khít ‘think’ and dəən ‘walk’ cannot:
Post gives further evidence showing how property concept words such as dii ‘good’ can be distinguished at a finer level of grain from action/event words such as dəən ‘walk’: this evidence includes distinct patterns of nominalization (Reference Post2008: 349), adverbialization (p. 353), and a specific pattern of reduplication with intensifying meaning (p. 364).
The case of Thai adjectives illustrates the typical situation in MSEA languages: property concept words will be like typical verbs in many respects, and in a few respects they will be distinct from those verbs. Depending on the details in the case of any specific language, and depending on a researcher’s inclination and perhaps theoretical persuasion, one may either conclude that there is no adjective class in the language (adjectives being basically verbs) or that adjectives form a distinct word class but have a lot in common with verbs.
Similar statements can be found for languages across MSEA. In Vietnam Mien, ‘adjectives share many properties of verbs’ (Doan and Mai Reference Doan and Mai1992: 89). For example, both adjectives and verbs take direct negation with the preposed negator mɤ̆j1:
And both adjectives and verbs can be directly modified by adverbs such as the preposed marker cɤ̆j5:
The issue of whether there really are adjectives in MSEA languages (and many other languages of the world) remains controversial, and can only be addressed seriously with detailed analysis of the full facts for each language. Such depth of analysis goes beyond our scope here, and indeed beyond the usual scope of the kinds of reference grammar works that we rely on in this book. In any case, for present purposes, we can safely say that adjectives are distinctly verb-like in this part of the world.