Adjectives as verbs (Northern Mansi)

AdjNotVMorph: Adjectives are distinct from verbs in their morphological and syntactic behavior.


(1) taw luwǝŋ simri-χūl puw-ǝs.
he/she bony perch-fish fish-pst.3sg
’He/she caught bony perches.’ (S. D.)


(2) tān luwǝŋ simri-χūl puw-s-ǝt.
they bony perch-fish fish-pst-3pl
’They caught bony perches.’ (S. D.)


(3) simri-χūl luwǝŋ.
perch-fish bony
’The perch is bony.’ (S. D.)


(4) simri-χūl-ǝt luwǝŋ-ǝt.
perch-fish-pl bony-pl
’Perches are bony.’ (S. D.)


(5) simri-χūl-ǝt luwǝŋ-ǝt ōl-s-ǝt.
perch-fish-pl   bony-pl be-pst-3pl
’The perches were bony’ (S. D.)


In Northern Mansi, the verb is marked for person, number, tense (1-2), mood and voice. Adjectives, however, can only take number-indicating suffixes in predicative constructions (3-4)(Kálmán 1976, Riese 2001), and tense is marked on the copula (5).

Author: 

Szilvia Németh