“Adjectives” in Tundra Nenets: Properties of Property Words

Nenets expresses property with lexical items that represent two main word classes: nouns and verbs. This study focuses on the morphological and syntactic features that are typical to adjectives in other languages and also characteristic to property words in Nenets: attributive and predicative positions, derivation, comparative construction and the formation of adverbs of manner. It argues that Nenets property words have features that distinguish them from other nouns and verbs. Furthermore, the study aims at explaining the dichotomy of Nenets property words in two words classes. At the same time, the study takes part in the discussion of the cross-linguistic universality of adjectives and linguistic categorization