No subject

[Elena Maslova]

Dear colleagues,

I wonder whether anybody has come across a morphological marker
with the following (or similar) properties:

1) the marker (say, X) combines with qualitative verbal stems,
for example, "be.good" > be.good-X (the language in question
lacks adjectives as a category, so if in some other languages
something with a similar semantics can be attached to adjectives,
this would count as "similar").

2) the resulting form functions as an adverbial, e.g.

be.good-X shoot "to shoot well"

3) the construction is *only* applicable if the property
described by the verb+adverbial phrase ("to shoot well") is
intended to single out one element of a set, whereby the verb
itself can characterize each element of the set, e.g.,

be.good-X shoot-PRTCP man "a man who shoots well"

(for other cases, where a qualitative adverbial meaning, e.g.,
"well" is needed, there is another morphological marker which is
attached to the same stem).

4) It is *not* a superlative form, that is, it is not implied
that (in the example above) the one who shoots *best* is chosen.
It is only required that he do it well. And, that only one entity
is to be chosen.

If such items are attested somewhere, is there a (more or less)
established and/or good grammatical term for them? Or what might
serve as such a term? Should this possibly be analyzed as a sort
of restrictive marking (yet restrictive relative clauses without
qualitative adverbials are not formally distinguished in the
language in question)?

Any help would be strongly appreciated.


Elena Maslova
University of Bielefeld

mailto:Maslova at jps.net

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