Adjectival derivation in Kambaata: Proprietive, Agentive, Privative and Similative
Résumé
Kambaata, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia, does not only have a large number of underived adjective lexemes but also several adjectivizing mechanisms. I briefly discuss the productive proprietive (‘possessing, containing N’), agentive (‘who/which V-s’) and privative derivations (‘without N’), before concentrating on the similative derivation, marked by -lab. The similative derivation is an innovation of Kambaata and not attested in related languages. After an introduction into formal aspects, i.e. the inflectional potential and the syntactic functions that similative adjectives typically adopt, I discuss the meaning of the -lab-suffix, which is determined by the word class membership of the base. On adjectives, especially colour terms, -lab expresses a reduced degree of a property (‘a bit, almost, fairly A’). Deverbal lab-adjectives express an approximate manner of doing something, a ‘kind of V-ing’ or an ‘almost (but not quite) V-ing manner’. Denominal lab-adjectives characterize something as ‘similar to N, almost like N in nature, character’.