Traces of grammatical gender in adjectives

8.1 Traces of grammatical gender in adjectives

From the list of adjectives in table 8.1 it is easy to see that some adjectives have kept the gender markers -pu and -mu, some have only masculine, and most do not have any gender marker. These same gender markers attach also to a limited number of nouns see more in section 3.4.4 on gender. Only in very few adjectives are the gender markers -pu and -mu productive. It seems that they have become grammaticalized. The following two examples illustrate some gender marked adjectives: 8.3 t ɕha nak-mu tɕik tɕha-mu tɕik chicken black-F1 INDF chicken-F1 INDF ‘A black chicken’ ‘A chicken’ 8.4 t ɕha nak-pu tɕik tɕha-pu tɕik chicken black-M1 INDF chicken-M1 INDF ‘A black rooster’ ‘A rooster’ This is one of the few adjectives that mark the gender in this way. The reason may be that in shamanism it does make a difference whether the sacrificed chicken is black male or black female. The masculine form nak-pu modifies also nouns like ‘human face’, ‘sheep’ and a few other nouns without any masculine reference. The stem nak- refers to black color or dark in some compound words. When it is used as a free noun nak it means a crime. For Lhomis evil deeds and bad characters are often associated with black. Another interesting example is the adjective ʈhaŋ-mu and ʈhaŋ-pu. This adjective is derived from a verb. Consider the following pair of examples. 8.5 mi ʈhaŋ-si tɕik mi ʈhaŋ-pu tɕik man cool.off-INTNS INDF man cool.off-M1 INDF ‘A very honest man’ ‘An honest man’ 8.6 t ɕhu ʈhaŋ-si duk. tɕhu ʈhaŋ-mu duk. water cool.off-INTNS EXIST.VIS water cool.off-F1 EXIST.VIS ‘Water is very cold.’ ‘Water is cold.’ I conclude that the gender markers have become grammaticalized with this root ʈhaŋ-, which is a verb meaning ‘to become cold liquids’. The masculine marked ʈhaŋ-pu modifies only humans and the feminine marked ʈhaŋ-mu modifies only fluids, food, etc. There is no longer gender difference. I do have examples of ŋom-pu ‘green, blue’, but none of the feminine counterpart ‘ŋom-mu. Probably here too the gender difference has been neutralized through grammaticalization just as with examples 8.5 and 8.6. For most Lhomis by the way this adjective refers both to green and blue color. Consider the following example. 8 .7 doŋpu u-ko ŋom-pu duk. tree that-head green-M1 EXIST.VIS ‘That tree is green.’ This illustrates a predicate adjective. I take one more pair from the list, saŋ-pu, saŋ-mu. Only the masculine form occurs as an adjective. Both forms are used as proper names, one for men and the other for women. As a free noun, saŋ refers to copper metal or a copper pot which is highly valued by Lhomis and regarded as ritually clean, free of defilement and has certain functions in their shamanism. It seems that sa ŋ-pu is derived from the noun saŋ ‘copper’ and saŋ-mu is just a feminine marked noun used as a proper name for ladies. Therefore they are not really prototypical adjectives and should not be in the list in table 8.1. 8.8 u-ko mi saŋ-pu bet. that-head man copper-M1 COP ‘He is a morally clean person.’ 8.9 u-ki phu-mu di-la saŋ-mu sik-ken bet. that-GEN son-F1 DEF-DAT copper-F1 say-NMLZ;CONJ AUX ‘That girl is called Sangmu.’ As the previous examples show, the gender markers -pu and -mu and the human classifier -pa, HUM1 are no longer productive in adjectives but have become grammaticalized. From now onwards I do not always treat them as separate suffixes but often lump them to the preceding morpheme, unless there is a clear reason to keep them separate.

8.2 Derivational operators that produce adjectives from nouns, postpositions, and adverbs