Identifying adjectives in Karitiana by the use of semantic criteria

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss criteria for identifying adjectives in natural languages using the language Karitiana (Arikén, Tupi) as an example. Firstly, the most traditional syntactic criteria used in the literature by descriptivists and typologists are discussed (DIXON, 1991, 2004). Despite the importance of these criteria as a first approximation of the phenomenon of predication in natural languages, they have certain limitations for the identification of adjectives in languages in which this word class appears in sentences with the same inflection found in intransitive verbs, as in Karitiana. Therefore, some semantic criteria are presented for the characterization of adjectives based on the notion of scalar properties (KENNEDY, 1999; KENNEDY, MCNALLY, 2005). These criteria are used to discuss not only the adjectives class, but also the typology of natural languages intensifiers (NEELEMAN; VAN DE KOOT; DOETJES, 2004; DOETJES, 2008). In Karitiana, especially, the distribution and behavior of the modifier pita(t) ‘very/a lot’ (described in SANCHEZ-MENDES 2014a) was found to be fundamental in helping to identify adjectives in the language.