Browsing by Author "Mutheiwana, Humbulani Doris"

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    The adjective in Tshivenda
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2000-04) Mutheiwana, Humbulani Doris; Du Plessis, J. A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of African Languages
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this study the adjective constructions in Tshiven~a are investigated within a set of criteria in order to characterize the adjectival category and to differentiate it from other categories. An adjective can be defined as a word which modifies a noun that prototypically denotes visible or tangible objects. Different linguists give different accounts which deal with criteria for adjectives where they give attention to prototype and certain multiple criteria. Dixon establishes seven different semantic types under which the adjectives can be grouped, e.g. one of them is dimension. It has been established by Schachter that there are languages that have no adjectives at all, in which the meanings that they express are conveyed by nouns or verbs. In other words what is universal is not adjectives but to modify, or elaborate on the meaning of a noun. Morphological adjectives are marked by a noun class prefix on the adjectival stem. The prefix agrees in class with the noun to which it refers. Morphological adjective can appear attributively and predicatively. When adjectives are used attributively in Tshivenda they usually appear as " complements of a noun. But when they are used predicatively, they occur in copulative constructions. Syntactic evidence relates to the fact that different categories of words have different distributions. Adjective can not be identified by looking at it in isolation, because the form of a word does not necessarily indicate its syntactic function. Descriptive possessives as semantic adjectives describe the noun they refer to in a way that is different to that of possessives. The descriptive part can be shown as the head of the noun and can also be shown as a complement of possessive [-a-] where they indicate location, time, event and gender.