Nominal categegories
4.7 Universal indefinites and other quantifiers
Universal indefinites are normally not formed from interrogative pronouns, but by means of the quantifierhar‘every’ (orli<b>il‘all’) plus a following noun:
• har admi‘everyone’ (every man)
• har/li<d>il cik’al‘everything’
• har/li<b>il musːa/musne‘everywhere’ (lit. every place/all places)
• har zamana‘always’ (lit. every time)
Other quantifiers aresukːil,li<b>il‘all, whole, complete’,har,haril,harki,harkil ‘ev-ery’,b-aqil,ʡaˁbra,ʡaˁbra-b-al‘much, many’, andkam‘little, few’. The quantifiers treated in this section have most morphosyntactic properties that adjectives have and, as adjec-tives, normally occur before teh noun when they function as nominal modifiers. But just like adjectives and some other nominal modifiers they can also follow the noun under certain circumstances. See §21.1.3 for quantifier floating.
The quantifierssukːilandli<b>ilcan both be used as attributes and they can be nomi-nalized. When they are used as attributes of nouns in the plural they mean ‘all’; with singular nouns they translate as ‘whole, complete’. The quantifier li<b>il has a gen-der/number agreement slot and follows the agreement rules for adjectives and other nominal modifiers, i.e. agreement with the head noun.
(121) a. li<b>il rurs-be‘all girls’ vs. li<r>il rursːi‘the whole girl’
b. sukːil qulbe‘all houses’ vs. sukːil qal‘the complete house’
(122) sukːil all
d-ut’-ib
npl-divide-pret ca one
daˁʡle as
‘He divided all (the bread) like one (i.e. everyone got the same amount).’
(123) di-la
1sg-genli<d>il
all<npl>daluj-te song-pl
‘all my songs’
From the quantifiers listed above,harcan only be used attributively. All other quan-tifiers can also be nominalized. The head noun is in the singular, but mass nouns that trigger plural agreement are also possible if an interpretation referring to a specific quan-tity is available.
‘All people escaped in every direction.’
(125) “t’ult’
breads-aqː-a,”
hither-carry-imp.sgb-ik’-ul
hpl-say.ipfv-icvb“haril-li-cːe-rka!”
every-obl-in-abl
‘“Bring bread from everyone!” they said.’
(126) het
‘I (fem.) gave everyone’s sack back and came back.’
The quantifiers b-aqil, ʡaˁbra, ʡaˁbra-b-al ‘much, many’ also show gender/number agreement with the head noun in case there is any. Otherwise they express the gender and number of the item they are referring to.
(127) d-aqil
‘He took part in many arguments.’ (i.e. he had many problems) (128) ʡaˁbra
‘There are many edible roots.’
The quantifier kam ‘little, few, less’ can modify nouns, it can be nominalized (by adding the cross-categorical suffix-ce; plural-te) and it occurs in compound verbs with the meaning ‘decrease, diminish, become less’ (129).
(129) qːalmaqːar-te
‘The scandals (i.e. fights) did not diminish.’
5.1 Introduction
Adjectives in Sanzhi can clearly be distinguished from nouns or verbs since they are not lexically specified for gender, and they cannot take tense suffixes or other inflectional morphology reserved for verbs. They are formally rather heterogeneous (§5.2). Sanzhi adjectives cover the typical semantic domains of this word class (1–12).
(1) dimension
qːant’‘short’ χːula‘big, old’
nik’a‘small’ aq‘high, tall’
(2) age
b-uqna‘old’ jangi‘new’
žahil‘young’
(3) evaluation:
wahi‘bad, evil’ ʡaˁħ‘good’
ʡaˁziz‘beloved, dear’ durqa‘dear, expensive’
durha‘cheap’ ʡaˁžib‘surprising’
(4) colour
c’utːar‘black’ c’ub‘white’
it’in‘red’ xanc’‘blue’
b-uqu‘yellow’ šiniš‘green’
(5) physical property (humans and non-humans) b-arx‘direct, straight, right’ dirq’‘plain’
qːuʁa‘beautiful’ čakːʷal‘handsome’
c’aˁb‘dark’ kuk‘light’ (i.e. not heavy)
dek’ʷ‘heavy’ gʷana‘warm’
buχːar‘cold’ jazuq;usal‘weak’
q’amc’‘sour’ mizi‘sweet’
bicːi‘tasty, aromatic’ b-uqen‘long’
b-uˁc‘thick, dense’ b-aˁršu‘thick’ (only inanimate referents) b-uk’ul‘thin’ ʁʷirc’‘thin’ (only with inanimate referents) mic’ir‘alive’ c’aq’‘strong, mighty’
debga‘tight’ laˁʁun‘smooth’
b-ac’‘empty’ k’ant’i‘soft’
duc’‘hot’ dibaˁʁ‘ugly’
ač‘open’ sːuqːur‘blind’
(6) human characteristics
razi‘happy’ duˁʡ ‘wild, unrestricted’
baˁħ‘crazy’ q’irq’ir‘greedy’
basrak‘greedy’ ʡaˁsi‘angry’
duχːu‘clever’ ʁaj adalχan‘mute’
taliħči-b‘lucky, happy’ dawlači-b‘rich’
pašman‘sad’ tašmiš‘sad’
sark‘open-hearted’
(7) speed
bahla‘slow, quiet’ halak‘fast’
(8) difficulty
qːihin‘difficult’ raˁħaˁt‘easy’
(9) similarity
miši‘similar’ dik’ar‘separate, different’
(10) quantification
har‘every’ li<b>il‘all’
cara‘other’ ʡaˁbra‘much, many’
kam‘little, few’ imc’a‘additional, superfluous’
b-aq‘much, many’
(11) position
guq‘low’ xːar‘low’
hek‘near’ qar‘upper’
haraq‘far’
(12) other
busan‘rainy’ urra‘foreign’
A few underived adjectives have agreement markers as can be see from the examples above. In addition, all derived adjectives containing the essive case plus-il, -či-band -b-azi-band all constructions withb-ah(§5.3) also agree. Adjectives agree with the head noun in gender and number (13), (27a), and (35). More information on gender/number agreement rules is provided in §20.2.
(13) či-r-ix-ub
spr-abl-take.off.pfv-pret ca-b cop-n
halak-le fast-advz
ca one
b-uqen n-long
q’aˁli branch
‘He immediately broke one long branch (off a tree).’
Adjectives can be modified by adverbs, most commonly by degree adverbs that pre-cede the adjectives, for examplec’aq’le(14),ħaˁq’le‘very’,arindan‘too, too much’ (15), b-aq‘much’,bah‘most’ (39),χːʷalle‘largely’,q’ʷila, bara, kamle‘little, few, a bit’ (16).
(14) c’aq’-le very-advz
χːʷal-le big-advz
ʡaˁħ good
∅-iχ-ub m-be.pfv-pret
ca-w cop-m
‘He was very, very good.’
(15) hetːi
‘The apples are too expensive.’
(16) di-la
‘My shirt was a bit long.’
There is no derivational means of forming negative adjectives. Only participles used like adjectives can have a negative variant if the verbal negation prefixa-is added, e.g.
a-b-ucː-an(neg-n-work-ptcp) ‘inoperative, spoiled, not working’. Otherwise negation is expressed on the verb that heads the clause containing the adjective (see, e.g. §22.2 on copula clauses).
Adjectives usually precede the head noun, but the reverse order is also possible. Mod-ifying adverbs, in turn, precede the adjective. §21.1.3 provides information about con-stituent order in the noun phrase.