Abstract
This paper presents a description of the adjective class in Dinka, and an exploration of its typological relevance to the existence of adjectives cross-linguistically. In Dinka, a subset of intransitive verbs can be defined by two morphophonological characteristics. The overwhelming majority of these are property concepts, despite the fact that the defining characteristics are unrelated to semantic properties. This calls into question whether or not properties provide a useful semantic context in the investigation of adjectives, even in languages where the adjective class is clearly a subclass of another lexical category. While the analysis is based primarily on the Bor South dialect of Dinka, it has been corroborated using evidence from other dialects. Therefore, it is likely that this characterization holds across the language.
Highlights
The status of adjectives as a universal word class is widely debated
According to Dixon (1982), this coherence takes the form of property concepts, which are a set of semantic types that are predictably lexicalized as adjectives cross-linguistically
Dryer 1997; Haspelmath 2010) argues that lexical categories cannot be compared crosslinguistically—that comparative concepts based in meaning can be universal, but grammatical behaviour cannot be. Whereas the former perspective argues that subtle differences—as opposed to dramatically different syntactic behaviour, for example—can form the basis for postulating a lexical category or sub-category, the latter perspective argues that subtle differences cannot— that an adjectival subclass of verbs in one language, for example, should not be equated to a separate lexical category of adjectives in another language
Summary
The status of adjectives as a universal word class is widely debated. For that matter, the existence of universal word classes is contentious; opinions differ on whether the ways that different languages express the same concepts can or should be compared. This paper will demonstrate that the adjective class in Dinka (West Nilotic, South Sudan) is a subclass of intransitive verbs, defined by two morphophonological characteristics: a low-toned finite form and an overlong ‘attributive construct state’ (ACS), which is the form that appears when a postnominal modifier is followed by another modifier Though they are clearly distinct morphologically, the adjectives are identical syntactically to non-adjectival intransitive verbs, and lack many characteristics posited as universal distinguishers of an adjectival class. References to ‘adjectival verbs’ have appeared in several descriptions of other grammatical phenomena in the Agar dialect of Dinka (Andersen 2014; 2019; 2020), but it has not been categorically stated whether the adjective class in Dinka is a subclass of verbs, whether there is more than one lexical category that contains properties, or whether there are multiple adjective classes in the language.
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