Property concepts in Tabaq: More than one road can lead to Rome

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the interplay between the morphosyntactic class of adjectives, the semantics of property concepts, and the function of noun modification in Tabaq, a Kordofan Nubian language (Nilo-Saharan phylum) spoken in the north-west of the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Tabaq has a small class of adjectives containing few semantic types, and playing only a limited role with respect to the core function of adjectives: the modification of nouns. By contrast, a large number of descriptive modifiers is derived from two other word classes, verbs and nouns, and this paper describes the different ways of coding property concepts in Tabaq.