A predicative verb is a verb that behaves as a grammatical
adjective
An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...
; that is, it predicates (qualifies or informs about the properties of its argument). It is a special kind of
stative verb
In linguistics, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static, or unchangin ...
.
Many languages do not use the present forms of the verb "to be" to separate an adjective from its noun: instead, these forms of the verb "to be" are understood as part of the adjective.
Egyptian
''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...
uses this structure: "my mouth is red" is written as "red my mouth" (/dSr=f r=i/). Other languages to use this structure include the
Northwest Caucasian languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, ''pontos'', referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian ...
, the
Thai language
Thai,In or Central Thai (historically Siamese;Although "Thai" and "Central Thai" have become more common, the older term, "Siamese", is still used by linguists, especially when it is being distinguished from other Tai languages (Diller 2008:6 ...
,
Indonesian, the
East Slavic languages
The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West Slavic languages, West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, ...
, the
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic,
Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...
, some
Nilotic languages
The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples.
Etymology
The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile river, Nile River or to the Nile region of A ...
and the
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language ...
. Many adjectives in
Chinese and
Japanese also behave like this.
In the
Akkadian language
Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic language that is attested ...
s, the "predicative" (also called the "permansive" or "stative") is a set of pronominal inflections used to convert noun stems into effective sentences, so that the form ''šarrāku'' is a single word more or less equivalent to either of the sentences ''šarrum anāku'' "I am king" or ''šarratum anāku'' "I am queen".
["Akkadian and Eblaite" by John Huehnergaard and Christopher Woods" in ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages'', edited by Roger D. Woodard (2004) , pages 245, 264, and 267.]
References
Parts of speech
Verb types
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