Detail #172: Subjective Adjectives

In a language with quite rich verbal morphology - including markers for subject, object and indirect object - certain adjectives require indirect object markers whenever they're used as attributes. When they're used as complements, the copula takes the indirect object (unless the complement use basically consists of turning them into verbs, in which case they of course retain the complement).

The indirect object serves to mark who perceives the thing as having such a quality. So, for instance 'beloved' would always mark whoever it is that loves the thing or person thus described.

Of course, this makes it very easy for us to sneak in some modern rationalist views into a language, and make it certain that its speakers would mark subjective things as subjective (i.e. delicious-to-me food) and thus somehow make the language more 'relativistic' or whatever. This is not, however, necessarily the case - it might just as well serve to make the language carry more coding for social hierarchies.

The set of adjectives having this would include a number of usual suspects - obviously subjective ones - beloved, favourite, beautiful, ugly, sweet, sour, tasty, bitter, stinky, etc. Maybe some adjectives of political or affiliative kind: loyal, radical, various clan/party-based adjectives. Perhaps certain occupations need a subjective marker. Obviously, covert occupations and such may have adjectives that come with this: thieves, spies. Perhaps religious heretics and various infidels that hide among the right believers? Maybe people with unspeakable vices. 

The social hierarchy coding I mentioned in the paragraph before the last one would obviously appear in how someone is loyal-to-me (I perceive him as loyal), or loyal-to-them (they perceive him as loyal), etc; clearly someone I perceive as loyal is also likely to be loyal to me, although I might also be talking of someone who's loyal to my enemy (and my impression is the important thing). Same goes with the various clan/party-adjectives: there might be specific adjectives for loyal-to-hostile-clan and loyal-to-friendly-clan as well as loyal-to-our-specific-clan. 

However, one could also include some adjectives that are not clearly subjective to us: pregnant, adult, permitted, forbidden, broken, whole.