Abstract

In the study of 'exotic' languages a question that often surges and sometimes evolves into discussion, is whether they have adjectives, or whether property denominating words, that could be called adjectives, are in fact better grouped with either the word classes of nouns or verbs. This paper examines whether adjectives can be said to exist as a separate word class in the Oto-Aztecan language Hueyapan, Nahuatl spoken in central Mexico. In recent studies of Mesoamerican languages for example Palancar (2006) argues that Otomi has no adjectives, but that the words referred to as adjectives by other Otomi scholars are in fact stative verbs. Oppositely, for Totonac, which has been claimed to be a language without adjectives, Beck (2000) argues that the property denoting words that previous scholars have relegated to the nominal category, are in fact adjectives. This paper investigates whether a class of adjectives can be defined by using Beck's arguments in Nahuatl specifically the variety spoken in Hueyapan, Morelos another Mesoamerican language for which there has been disagreement regarding the existence of a separate class of adjectives. In order to arrive at conclusions about whether a language has adjectives or not,

Highlights

  • In the study of 'exotic' languages a question that often surges and sometimes evolves into discussion, is whether they have adjectives, or whether property denominating words, that could be called adjectives, are better grouped with either the word classes of nouns or verbs

  • This paper investigates whether a class of adjectives can be defined by using Beck's arguments in Nahuatl - the variety spoken in Hueyapan, Morelos - another Mesoamerican language for which there has been disagreement regarding the existence of a separate class of adjectives

  • We have not been able to determine whether words denoting property is a separate lexical class in Hueyapan Nahuatl according to the principle of markedness proposed by Beck (2000)

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Summary

Introduction

In the study of 'exotic' languages a question that often surges and sometimes evolves into discussion, is whether they have adjectives, or whether property denominating words, that could be called adjectives, are better grouped with either the word classes of nouns or verbs. Dixon (2004) proposes to define as 'adjective' any discrete lexical class that contains property concept terms in a given language This means that a class of adjectives can be separated from nouns or verbs through only morphological criteria, for example if the class of verbs describing property concepts are exempt from marking certain morphological categories. A third class of property words are distinguishable on morphological grounds: property words such as wēyi 'big', kwalle 'good', īstak 'white' katzāwak 'dirty' yānkwīk 'new' are able to function both as predicates or arguments just like nouns or verbs, but they do not partake in any of the morphological categories that are specific to either verbs (T/A/M) or nouns (possession) This means that in Dixonian terms Hueyapan Nahuatl does have an adjective class – a class of words describing properties that is morphologically distinguishable.

Frequency of property words in functions as modifiers and arguments
Conclusion
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