LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 17:8 August 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
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         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
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The ‘Adjective’ in Tibeto-Burman:
A Case of the Mising Language

Sarat Kumar Doley, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to describe the form and distribution of Mising adjectives and adjectivals in their modificational and predicational functions. ‘Adjective’ refers to “terms which describe property concepts” (Dixon 1997). The term ‘adjectival’ is used because, in the Tibeto-Burman languages, words which describe property concepts are frequently derived from other word categories – primarily from verbs. Moreover it has been argued that Tibeto-Burman languages frequently do not support an independent category of adjectives and it is likely that they were not part of the proto-language (Noonan 1997). Thus this analysis can be brought to bear on the question of whether adjectives are a distinct and independent category in Tibeto-Burman and whether or not are they re-constructible to the proto-language.

Keywords:

Introduction

Within functionalist theory, grammatical categories are claimed to arise from prototypes according to either of two inter-related schemata. The first is the time stability schema of Givón (2001). In brief: nouns represent the most time-stable concepts, and verbs the least. The second is the predication schema, whereby the basic unit of communication is the predication, whose basic parts are predicates and arguments. Nouns represent those words which are prototypically used as arguments; verbs represent those words which are prototypically predicates. According to either schema, adjectives are problematic: they represent concepts whose time stability is between that of nouns and verbs, and their status as predicates or arguments is, as a group, indeterminate. It has been observed that as a result of this is many languages lack a definable set of adjectives; instead either nouns or verbs express property concepts as the sense requires. And of those languages that do have a set of adjectives, the ‘true, or ‘core’ adjectives may be either small in number and constitute a closed set, and/or they may exhibit behaviours that distinguish them from nouns or verbs only in small ways (Dixon 1977, 2004). According to Noonan (1998), the native Tibeto-Burman pattern is, for the most part, to express property concepts as nouns (when modifying) or, as stative verbs (when predicating). Modifying adjectivals are usually nominalised, i.e. derived with a morpheme which also derives, or historically derived, nouns. Predicate adjectivals, on the other hand, will take the form of stative verbs, which in fact they are.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Sarat Kumar Doley, M.A., PGDFCS, PGDHE, PGDET, Ph.D. Candidate
Assistant Professor
Department of English
North Lakhimpur College
Khelmati
North Lakhimpur, Lakhimpur 787031
Assam
India
dolesar@tezu.ernet.in

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