Detail #151: Differential Object Marking and Adjectives as Verbs

Let us consider a language where adjectives mainly are intransitive verbs, and can be coordinated with another verb instead of being placed in a position where they are 'close' to their head noun:

bar-e veed nem-dag
big-* man run-3sg
veed nem-dag u bar-dag
man run-3sg COORD big-3sg

* is a marker that goes on any adjective that immediately precedes its noun or any other adjective that precedes its noun and so on. An 'unpredicate' marker to some extent.

But let's add a little complication. Let's have two object cases - first, a classical accusative, and for now we'll let -as do as its marker. For the other, we take the genitive, which in this language is -asi, just so we have something to work with.

bar-e veed kaud-dag stour-as
big-* man  fight-3SG bear-ACC

veed kaud-dag stour-as u bar-dag
man  fight-3SG bear-ACC and big-3SG

 both signify that it's a large man fighting the bear

Now, however, we might want to focus on the other fighter! And here's where the genitive case is used on objects.

veed kaud-dag stour-asi u bar-dag
man fight-3SG bear-GEN and big-3SG
the man fights the big bear

Generally, such separated adjective-verbs would go first, as emphasized adjectives in a sense. Thus, this serves as a change to connect such adjectives to the object (which is probably the second most likely constituent for which one would want to do such a construction). Of course, the adjective-verbs could have TAM markers that show that these verbs are results of the action:

veed lam-dag tist-asi u karn-em-dag
man color-3SG house-GEN red-INCEPTIVE-3SG
the man painted the house and it turned red
'the man painted the house red'