Lexical Categories and The Status of Descriptives in Apinajé

Bibliographic Data

ID4558993
AuthorsChristiane Cunha De Oliveira (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume69
Issue3
Pages243-274
Publication date2003-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of American Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7071 • E-ISSN: 1545-7001
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/381336
OpenAlexW1999659569
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited18

The category membership of words expressing adjectival meanings (Descriptives) in Macro‐Jê languages has been a topic of recent interest and dispute among researchers. While there is agreement about the absence of Adjective as a word class, there is disagreement on whether Descriptives should be analyzed as a subclass of Nouns or Verbs, since Descriptives share features with both. This study devises a set of internal criteria for establishing the category membership of Descriptives in Apinajé (Jê family). Morphosyntactic properties common to Nouns, Verbs, and Descriptives are explored first, showing that valid arguments can be made in favor of alternative analyses of Descriptives, or against a categorical distinction between Nouns and Verbs. Against this background, further syntactic constructions, such as relativization and imperatives, are introduced; these support a categorical distinction between Nouns and Verbs, and lead to the conclusion that Descriptives do constitute a subclass of Verbs

Linguistics · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation