Property concepts in the Cariban family: Adjectives, adverbs, and/or nouns?

Abstract

"It has been a staple of typology since Dixon (1977, 1982) that the adjective class is not universal,with “property concepts” (semantic adjectives) sometimes found in a lexical class of adjectives, but sometimes in other word classes, especially verbs and nouns. Much of the descriptive typological discussion since has focused on the question of whether a “missing” adjective class is a subcategory of nouns or a subcategory of verbs. The theoretical discussion, too, has focused on the ways in which adjectives are midway between nouns and verbs, e.g. Givón’s (2001) suggestion that adjectives semantically fall between the time stability of nouns and the time instability of verbs; cf. also Croft’s (2002.87ff) more indepth discussion of properties as midway between objects and actions also in terms of relationality, stativity, and gradability"