Attributive verb

Attributive verb

In grammar, an attributive verb is a verb which modifies (gives the attributes of) a noun, rather than expressing an independent idea as a predicate.

In English, verbs may only be attributive as participles: "the walking man; a walked dog; uneaten food."

However, many other languages allow regular verbs to be attributive. For example, in Japanese, predicative verbs come at the end of the clause, after the nouns, while attributive verbs come before the noun. These are equivalent to relative clauses in English; Japanese does not have relative pronouns like "who", "which", or "when":

::"That person walked yesterday."

::"That person who walked yesterday."

(In textbooks, the particle "ga" often appears after the subject: "Kinou ano hito ga aruita." However, "ga" is frequently omitted in conversation.)

Japanese attributive verbs inflect for grammatical aspect, as here, and grammatical polarity, but not for politeness. For example, the polite form of "hito aruita" is "hito arukimasita," but one cannot say "*arukimasita hito." Except for this, Japanese verbs have the same form whether predicative or attributive. Historically, however, these had been separate forms. This is still the case in languages such as Korean and Turkish:

*"Şiir okur." "S/he reads a poem."
*"Okan şiir" "a poem which s/he reads"

Notice that all of these languages have a verb-final word order, and that none of them have relative pronouns. They also do not have a clear distinction between verbs and adjectives, as can be seen in Japanese:

*"Sora (ga) aoi." "The sky is blue."
*"Aoi sora" "A blue sky."

In Japanese, "aoi" "blue" is effectively a descriptive verb rather than an adjective.

All of these characteristics are common among verb-final languages.

ee also

*Attributive adjective
*Attributive noun


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Attributive — may mean:* pertaining to an attribute * pertaining to attribution * attributive adjective * attributive noun * attributive verb …   Wikipedia

  • Verb — This article is about the part of speech. For the physical activity program, see VERB (program). For English usage of verbs, see English verbs. Verbs redirects here. For the Christian gospel rapper, see Verbs (rapper). Examples I washed the car… …   Wikipedia

  • attributive — adjective Date: 1606 1. relating to or of the nature of an attribute ; attributing 2. joined directly to a modified noun without a linking verb (as city in city streets) • attributive noun • attributively adverb …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • attributive — attributively, adv. attributiveness, n. /euh trib yeuh tiv/, adj. 1. pertaining to or having the character of attribution or an attribute. 2. Gram. of or pertaining to an adjective or noun that is directly adjacent to, in English usually… …   Universalium

  • attributive adjective — n. adjective that comes before a noun and not after a copula verb, (Grammar) …   English contemporary dictionary

  • Ditransitive verb — In grammar, a ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects which refer to a recipient and a theme. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and indirect, or primary and secondary.… …   Wikipedia

  • Auxiliary verb — In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one… …   Wikipedia

  • Germanic strong verb — In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung. The term strong verb is a translation of German starkes Verb , which was coined by the linguist… …   Wikipedia

  • Compound verb — In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi word compound that acts as a single verb. One component of the compound is a light verb or vector, which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, but provides only …   Wikipedia

  • Defective verb — In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb which is missing e.g. a past tense, or cannot be used in some other way that normal verbs come. Formally, it is a verb with an incomplete conjugation. Defective verbs cannot be conjugated in certain… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”