Deverbal adjectives are different from regular participles: The case of Natioro (Gur)

The paper deals with the syntax and semantics of deverbal adjectives in Natioro, an underdescribed Gur (<Niger-Congo) language. In Natioro, adjectives and participles (as well as forms with the distribution of Past Perfect) are derived using the same suffix, thus raising the question of whether the two represent the same syntactic category. In this paper, I argue against a uniform analysis of adjectives and participles. I show that the two classes exhibit different properties — namely, the adjectives denote states, whereas regular non-adjectival participles denote dynamic events. I argue that the theories claiming that Perfect-like forms refer to states do not account for the full range of the Natioro data. Many deverbal participles do not refer to states at all, but the state interpretations of deverbal adjectives arise due to the range of aktionsart properties of the initial verbal stem rather than to the semantics of the derivational affix. In particular, state interpretations of the adjectives are determined by the aktionsart of the initial verbal stem. Namely, these verbs have stative readings (‘be A’) which are inherited by their adjectival counterparts. I also show that, nevertheless, deverbal adjectives can be regarded as reduced clauses which do not extend beyond the vP node. However, those do not pattern with predicative uses which are presumably non-grammaticalized aspect markers. Finally, I propose a hypothesis on the diachronic source of both deverbal adjectives and other participles. Namely, I discuss the possible relations of the suffix deriving adjectives and participles with the dummy noun ‘thing’ and with the suffix deriving deverbal nouns. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the discussion of variation in the semantic properties of adjectives derived from verbs, providing a large-scale data from an understudied language.