Formation of adjectival attributes

Sanzhi does not have very productive means of forming new adjectives, but there are a few suffixes that take nouns as base and derive adjectives. Other ways of extending the lexicon is by means of genitive attributes and a special construction with the noun

‘owner’ (see below). Furthermore, participles are used and nowadays Russian adjectives also occur occasionally.

Sanzhi has a number of adjectives that are derived from nouns denoting body parts and personal qualities. These adjectives express the possession of this body part. The base noun is marked for plural and then the suffix-aris added whereby the final vowel of the

plural suffix undergoes deletion (23). This suffix might be a cognate of the participle suffix of the copula-ar(§16.1). The adjectives form the plural by mean of the most common plural suffix-te. Two examples are provided in (24a) and (24b).

(23) a. ʁiz-b-ar‘hairy’ <ʁizbe‘hairs’

b. qi-m-ar‘horned’ <qime‘horns’

c. supen-t-ar‘whiskered, mustached’ <supente‘mustache’

d. laˁpː-ar‘big-eared, having ears’ <laˁpːe‘ears’

e. cul-b-ar‘having (big) teeth’ <culbe‘teeth’

f. ul-b-ar ‘having big eyes’ <ulbe‘eyes’

g. k’ult’-n-ar‘pregnant’ <k’ult’ne‘bellies’

h. piš-n-ar‘naughty boy, scamp’ <pišne‘habits, tricks’

i. ʡaˁmul-t-ar‘talented’ <ʡaˁmulte‘skills, talents’

(24) a. het that

kːaˁta cat

ʁiz-b-ar hair-pl-adjvz

ca-b cop-n

‘The cat is hairy.’ (E) b. ʁiz-b-ar-te

hair-pl-adjvz-pl

kːaˁt-ne cat-pl

‘hairy cats’ (E)

There are a few adjectives involving compounding with numerals and mostly plural nouns and the suffix-(a)n. As with the adjectives given in (25), the nouns occur in the plural. It might be the case that this suffix is a cognate of the modal/future participle-an (§18.1.2.2), the locative participle-an(§18.1.2.4) and/or the suffix-anthat is used for the derivation of terms denoting inhabitants of particular villages and other places (§10).

(25) a. aʁmuzan‘quadratic’ < aʁʷ ‘four’ +muza-ncorner-adjvz b. ʡaˁbmuzan‘triangular’ < ʡaˁb‘three’ +muza-ncorner-adjvz c. ʡaˁbkumran‘three-layered’ < ʡaˁb‘three’ +kam-r-anlayer-pl-adjvz d. ʡaˁbdusːan‘three-year’ < ʡaˁb‘three’ +dusː-anyear-pl-adjvz Another type of derived adjectival attributes can be formed from adjectives denoting relational qualities. To the base adjectives the suffix-gm-azi-gmis added and the result-ing adjectives denote an extreme quality. As can be seen in (26), the base can already be a derived adjective. The resulting adjectives occur in attributive, predicative and sub-stantive function (27a–27d). In the predicative function the suffix -ce(-te) is required (27b).

(26) a. b-aq-b-azi-b, b-aq-il-b-azi-b‘very much, very many’

<b-aq‘much, many’

b. kam-b-azi-b‘very few, very little’ <kam‘few, little’

c. ʡaˁħ-b-azi-b‘very good, excellent’ <ʡaˁħ‘good’

d. qːuʁa-b-azi-b‘very beautiful’ <qːuʁa‘beautiful’

e. ʁezbar-b-azib‘very hairy’ <ʁezbar‘hairy’

f. ʡaˁbra-b-azi-b‘very much, very many, plenty’

<ʡaˁbra‘much, many’

(27) a. dam

‘I know good people.’ (E) b. hetːi

‘Those people are good.’ (E) c. ʡaˁbra-d-azi-d

‘I remember very well.’

d. cara-te

‘There are other (experts like) engineers, mechanics, among the villagers, there are plenty.’

I found three adjectives with the suffix-čifollowed by a gender/number agreement marker (28). The base nouns are all loans. When the adjectives occur in predicative or nominal function they need one of the cross-categorical suffixes -ceor-il(29), (30).

(28) a. dawla-či-b‘rich’ < dawla‘wealth’

b. taliħ-či-b‘lucky, happy’ < taliħ‘happiness, luck’

c. ʡaˁq’lu-či-b‘intelligent’ < ʡaˁq’lu‘intellect, mind’

(29) it

‘The animals had apparently more consciences than our rich (people).’

For Standard Dargwa, Abdullaev et al. 2014: 212 have claimed that -čiis a cognate of the spatial postpositionči‘on, above’ . However, for Sanzhi this cannot be true because the

postpositiončican be used with both native and loan words and it governs the loc-series or, alternatively, the genitive case (§8.1.7). The adjectivizer -čican also not be equated with the Turkic loan suffix -či(§3.5.1), which derives agent nouns because nouns do not inflect for gender and the agent nouns do not need any further suffixes in order to be used in argument position or as predicates. Furthermore, in Standard Dargwa the form of the adjectivizer is -če, but the form of the borrowed nominalizer is -čithroughout all Dagestanian languages.

Nouns denoting materials and other properties or adverbs and nouns with temporal semantics can be inflected for the genitive and then yield the meaning of relational ad-jectives (31) (see also §3.4.1.3 for more examples).

(31) murhe-la‘golden’ ižal-la‘today’s’

urcu-la‘wooden’ haniša-la‘summer’ (adjective) dešːa-la‘ancient’ <dešːa‘antiquity, old times’

ʡaˁb-bac-la‘three-month’ <ʡaˁb‘three’ +bac-la‘month’s’

It is possible to express attribution with a possessive construction consisting of a noun in the genitive denoting the possessed and the nounb-ah‘owner’.¹ This construction represents a standard genitive phrase. The noun agrees with the head noun in gender and number. These constructions can occur as predicates (33) and as attributes (34).

(32) a. muc’ur-ra w-ah‘bearded’ (plmuc’ur-ra b-ah-inte) b. č’imi-la b-ah‘having a tail’

c. abrazovanie-la w-ah‘educated’ (from Russianobrazovanie‘education’) (33) umc’-un

search.ipfv-icvb ca-b cop-hpl

ča who

ca-w=el cop-m=indq

ʡaˁjb-la guilt-gen

w-ah m-owner hel-tː-a-cːe-rka

that-pl-obl-in-abl

‘They are searching for who among them is guilty.’

(34) er look

w-ik’-ul

m-look.at.ipfv-icvb ca-w.

cop-m ca one

ul-la eye-gen

b-ah n-owner

šajt’an devil ka-b-isː-un-ne

down-n-sleep.pfv-pret-cvb

‘He is looking around. The devil with one eye is asleep.’