Chapter 37Property Predicates and the Adjective Analysis

37.2.1 Predication and person marking

Property predicates occur without a copula. Shibatani's examples include a mountain's height and the strength of the wind:

Third person is unmarked in these examples. Other persons take the same S series as other intransitives. Nakagawa compares Saru ku=pewre “I was young” and ku=mina “I laugh” in their sentence contexts Nakagawa (2024: 119, examples 1–2). The first-person singular marker alone is shared with A marking, but the comparison extends to the intransitive paradigm Nakagawa (2022: §2.2, Table 2).

37.2.2 Derivational morphology

Property verbs participate in verbal derivation. Refsing gives pirka → pirkare “good → cure, heal” and wen → wente “bad → damage” Refsing (1986: 142). Nakagawa illustrates the combination of pirka with applicative, reflexive, and causative morphology Nakagawa (2022: §2.2, example 6).

Compatibility depends on meaning and the particular formation. Productive causatives and lexical transitivizing pairs have different distributions; see Chapter 73 (Valency and Voice Constructions). These examples establish verbal derivation without requiring every affix to combine freely with every property predicate.

37.2.3 States and changes of state

Poro can mean “large” or “become large,” and hure “red” or “become red.” Context determines the appropriate reading Nakagawa (2024: 119). A separate copula is unnecessary for this change-of-state meaning. Nakagawa rejects hure ne with the intended simple meaning “become red” Nakagawa (2024: 119).

An imperative can select a change-of-state reading:

The range of readings need not be equally natural for every word. Nakagawa uses kiyanne-re “treat someone as an elder” to illustrate the semantic potential of kiyanne “be older” Nakagawa (2024: 120). The causative describes a way of treating the person, rather than a literal alteration of chronological age.

37.4.1 The separate prenominal class

Demonstrative and numeral prenominals have a more restricted distribution than property verbs. A form such as tan modifies a noun in tan cise “this house,” and a formal noun supplies the head in tan pe “this” Bugaeva (2012: 471). The existence of this prenominal class does not determine the classification of predicates such as pirka and poro.

37.4.2 Pon, poro, and differences among property meanings

Pon “small” and poro “large” occur in noun-modifying expressions, but also take S marking as predicates. Nakagawa's Saru examples include ku-pon in a clause meaning “when I was small” and ku-poro in one meaning “since I became older” Nakagawa (2022: §§2.2–2.3, examples 3, 8).

Property meanings also occur among zero-argument predicates. Weather mean “be cold” contrasts with one-place merayke “feel cold.” The latter takes an experiencer's person marker Nakagawa (2024: 129–130, Table 12). Their classification is described in Chapter 36 (Verb Classes, Arguments, and Person Marking).

37.4.3 The historical adjective analysis

Kindaichi and Chiri's 1936 grammar recognizes adjectives while stating that their person inflection coincides with that of its Class II verbs Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 92, §129; 123–124, §§189–190). Its account also excludes an imperative use for adjectives, whereas Shibatani gives the imperative Tunasno pirka! cited above Shibatani (1990: 19) ‹contested›.

Nakagawa relates the later verbal classification to Chiri's rejection of the verb–adjective distinction for these forms Nakagawa (2024: 118). The historical label and the modern one therefore reflect different accounts of shared morphology and its grammatical consequences.