On the Reality of the Adjectival Category in Edo

Abstract

Previous works on Edo lexicon did not only recognize the adjectival category as a distinct word class but split it into pure and derived adjectives. This paper reviews relevant existing literature on the Edo adjective and their assumptions against the backdrop of evidence from the analysis of the internal structure of constructs assumed to be adjectives in the language. The paper demonstrates that, contrary to claims in the previous studies, there exists no basic lexical item that expresses the adjectival concept in the language. What obtains is the consistent adaptation of clausal/phrasal or complement constructions by Edo native speaker to express the adjectival concepts employed in nominal modification. A decomposition of the constituent structure of the Edo noun phrase assumed to be computed from a nominal ccommanded by an adjective is in reality an output governed by series of modification processes whose surface realization has before now been misinterpreted as adjectives that qualify Edo nominals.