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Part of
All Things Morphology: Its independence and its interfaces
Edited by Sedigheh Moradi, Marcia Haag, Janie Rees-Miller and Andrija Petrovic
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 353] 2021
► pp. 289–304

Chapter 16
In further pursuit of the adjective

Evidence from the Siouan language Osage

| University of Oklahoma

The Osage language is shown to have a lexical category Adjective based primarily on morphological and secondarily on syntactic evidence. The hypothesis with the most currency is that Siouan predicates are either active or stative verbs, and that given the lack of distinguishing morphology, adjectives cannot be classified as separate from stative verbs. I show that Osage treats adjectives differently from stative verbs in compound formation, in noun phrase modification, as clausal predicates, and in the exponence of Scale. The number of predicates that could be thus classified as adjectives seems to be larger than those in some other Siouan languages such as Hocąk and Lakota.

Keywords: Osage, Siouan, adjectives, lexical properties
Article outline
  • 1.Outline of the problem
  • 2.Three pertinent hallmarks of Siouan and other American languages
  • 3.Related work on Siouan adjectives
  • 4.Varieties of compounded nouns in Osage
  • 5.Phrasal modification
  • 6.Clausal predicates: Adjectives or stative verbs?
    • 6.1Stative-like predicates without subject agreement
    • 6.2Stative-like predicates with use of copula
    • 6.3Subjects of adjectival predicates without subject markers
  • 7.The property Scale
  • 8.Adjective derivation from verbs
  • 9.Summary of distinctions between Osage verbs and adjectives
  • 10.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.353.16haa
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