Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia
Vol. 16, No. 1

The notion of "adjective" in Dhao; A language spoken in eastern Indonesia

Balukh, Jermy I. (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Apr 2015

Abstract

It is cross-linguistically defined that adjective is a word category that typically denotes quality and attributes. This category basically falls into semantic properties denoting age, dimension, values, and colours. They also indicate human propensities, physical properties, and speed. Syntactically, adjective typically functions as noun modifiers. However, many adjectives also share features with verbs and/or nouns. This makes adjectives not easy to define. Therefore, morphological and syntactic accounts are required, in addition to semantics, to define the prototypical characteristics of adjectives. This paper has shown that majority of lexemes denoting adjectival properties in Dhao share features with verbs. Although the prefix pa- can be attached to verbs and adjectives to generate causative meaning, adjectives are confined only to the second verb in serial verb construction, instead of being the predicate heads. Further, only four adjectives can function as noun modifiers in their bare forms. These latter adjectives are considered as pure or simple adjectives, while the other nine qualifying for adjectives as "recategorized" adjectives.

Copyrights © 2015






Journal Info

Abbrev

publication:wacana

Publisher

Subject

Arts Humanities Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Library & Information Science Social Sciences

Description

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. It invites original articles on various issues within humanities, which include but are not limited to philosophy, literature, archaeology, ...