Qualification and Stative Verbs in 'Afar

International audience Afar (qafaraf [ʕafaraf]), a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia, has no adjectival category as such. A quality is predicated by using a relative clause, restrictive and non-restrictive, with: i) a verb expressing property, quality or state (ex. 1-2), or ii) a compound predicative construction based on a noun and the verb ‘le ‘have’ (ex.3) or its negative reflex sinni ‘be devoid of, lack’ (ex. 4). 1a(V2) biyaakite awka daktar beene(h) be_ill.PFV.3M.SG/boy/hospital/take.PFV.1PL(ASS) ‘We took the sick child to hospital’ 1b (V2) awka-y/biyaakite/daktar/beene(h) boy-REL/be_ill.PFV.3M.SG/hospital/take.PFV.1PL(ASS) ‘We took the sick child to hospital’ (lit. ‘the child who was sick’)2(V3) meqe miqaq le(h /Pl. meqe migaq loonu(h) be_good.3SG/name/have.3SG(ASS) / PL be_good.3SG/name/ have.3PL(ASS) ‘He is famous’ (lit. he has a name that is good) - ‘They are famous’3-4(Comp.) amo-le num 4 amo-sinni num intelligence-have.3SG/man intelligence-be_devoided.3SG/man ‘An intelligent man’ 4 ‘A stupid man’Traditionally Afar verbs are divided into three types: types i and ii (V1 and V2) differ only in their morphology, and type iii (V3) differs from the first two types in morphology, syntax and semantics. Verbs denoting a property or a quality belong to all three types. Basic forms of V1 and V2 are active, transitive or intransitive, and some derived/extended-stems of V1 and V2 are middle or passive verbs expressing a quality or a property. V3, the so-called ‘stative verbs’, are all intransitive, with the exception of two emotion verbs (kicni /kiħní/ ‘love’ and niqbá /niʕbá/ ‘hate’), as well as le ‘have’, and sinni ‘not have/not be’, all are middle verbs, expressing an immutable quality, a definitive state, a determining property, inherent in the referent. The morphological and semantic specificities of V3 verbs allow them to play a central role in the noun qualification in Afar. V3 as a verb predicates quality while determining the noun like a descriptive adjective in languages where this category exists.