Is There an Adjective Class in Wolof?

Abstract One of the striking characteristics of many Niger-Congo languages is the small set of underived adjectives that they possess. Igbo, for example, has only eight un derived adjectives which occur as antonym pairs (Welmers 1973: 259; Dixon 1981: 4), while Ewe has only five (see Ameka 2002). In some languages, such as Akan, words with an adjectival function are barely distinguishable from nouns, while in others, such as Yoruba, they resemble verbs (Welmers 1973: 155-7). Remarking on the latter type, Creissels (2000: 249-50) adds that ‘Wolof illustrates the borderline case of a language that properly speaking does not have a category “adjective”; and in which even notions most typically encoded through adjectival lexemes are encoded through lexemes that fulfil the predicate function inexactly the same way as typically verbal lexemes.’ Lexical items most likely lo be adjectives on a semantic basis behave in an overwhelmingly verb-like manner in Wolof. They function as intransitive predicates and not as copula complements, and they modify nouns in an NP within relative clause constructions. Work verb-like adjectivals are found widely in the world’s languages, in Chapter 1 Dixon proposes that all languages have an adjectival class that is in some way distinct from other word classes in a given language, thereby predicting that adjectivals in languages like Wolof will exhibit some behaviour ,however subtle, that sets them apart from other verbs.