rarissimum 143: only a single adjective – that is, one item of a word class distinct from other word classes (in particular nouns and verbs) and comparable to a word class of adjectives in other languages
Where found
Toqabaqita (Austronesian, spoken in the Solomon Islands)
Domain
syntax
Subdomain
word classes
Keywords
adjective
Type
rarissimum
Universals violated
Source
Lichtenberk, Frantisek (2000). The lone adjective of Toqabaqita. Paper at the Parts of Speech conference, Helsinki.
That lone adjective is ‘small, little (in size or quantity)’. Diachronically, its source appears to be a noun meaning ‘child’. Its opposite, ‘big’, is expressed through the noun ‘mother’ (or archaically, ‘father’). The distinctive morphosyntactic properties of the lone adjective include the inability to be used predicatively, the use in NPs as modifier of a head noun preceding it (unlike nouns and verbs used attributively, which follow the head), incipient agreement in number, animacy, count/mass.
While it is possible for lgs not to have any adjectives, it has been claimed that the minimum is “about five” once they have that category (Dixon 1994: 34).
Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Adjectives. In R. E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 29-35. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
That lone adjective is ‘small, little (in size or quantity)’. Diachronically, its source appears to be a noun meaning ‘child’. Its opposite, ‘big’, is expressed through the noun ‘mother’ (or archaically, ‘father’).
The distinctive morphosyntactic properties of the lone adjective include the inability to be used predicatively, the use in NPs as modifier of a head noun preceding it (unlike nouns and verbs used attributively, which follow the head), incipient agreement in number, animacy, count/mass.
While it is possible for lgs not to have any adjectives, it has been claimed that the minimum is “about five” once they have that category (Dixon 1994: 34).
Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Adjectives. In R. E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, 29-35. Oxford: Pergamon Press.