Tensed adjectives?

[Opalescent Yams]

Are there any natural languages that have tense marking on adjectives?

I'm mostly thinking about languages where adjectives are a distinct class, because if the are coded in a verb-y manner than I'd expect tense marking wouldn't be unexpected. (Though then again, I can also see stative verbs being routinely incompatible with tense marking...)

[Zaarin]

Not exactly what you're looking for (maybe exactly what you're not looking for), but (some?) Semitic languages have aspect-marked participles that occupy a very nebulous space between adjective and verb (in Phoenician and Biblical Hebrew, probably other Semitic languages as well, they can be a clause's only verb-like word).

[Linguoboy]

Korean (so presumably Japanese as well).

[akam chinjir]

Do you mean specifically predicative adjectives, or attributive ones as well?

[Opalescent Yams]

Do you mean specifically predicative adjectives, or attributive ones as well?

I was actually mostly thinking about attributive adjectives specifically; I probably should have made that clear.

[akam chinjir]

You could use temporal adverbs ("once", "formerly") rather than tense marking strictly speaking, otherwise I think you'd need a relative clause of some sort.

[Salmoneus]

English.

Oh, sure, only on participles, and only for intransitives (for transitives it's a distinction in voice), but the difference between "the breaking mug" and "the broken mug" is when the breaking takes/took place.

EDIT: also, there's systematic marking of past-tense non-participle adjectes through the prefix once-. "The green field" vs "the once-green field". Note that 'once' comes closer to the adjective than any other adverb, even the ones that normally take priority.

[KathTheDragon]

It's more of a difference in aspect than tense, where "broken" is resultative. If you transpose the two into relative clauses, both "the cup which is broken" and "the cup which was broken" are valid.

[akam chinjir]

Hard to count participles as un-verb-y, though.

[Linguoboy]

Korean (so presumably Japanese as well).

To expand on this:

• Korean has a small class (i.e. a half-dozen members) of true adjectives which do not inflect. Some have derived forms which do, e.g. 새 /say/ "new" > 새롭다 /saylopta/ "to be new".
• In general, the closest analogues of "adjectives" in other languages are a subclass of verbs called "descriptive verbs", which have a number of peculiarities compared to ordinary non-stative verbs. Prominent among these is that they never take the present indicative infix -는- /-nun-/ nor the present attributive suffix -는 /-nun/.(*)
• Descriptive verbs can, however, take the future attributive ending -을 /-ul/, e.g. 새로울 /sayro.wul/ "that will be new". They also take the past infix -었- /-ess-/ and the retrospective infix -더- /-te-/ but not--AFAIK--the future infix -겠- /-keyss/.
• This infixes can appear even in attributive forms, e.g. 나빴은 /nap.ass.un/ "that had been worse" (bad-PST-PST.ATTR).

(*) Obviously there's a historical relationship here, as modern Korean finite forms are often derived from historical participial/infinitival forms.

[akam chinjir]

How flexible are the attributive markers? Do they occur only with the descriptive verbs?

[Linguoboy]

How flexible are the attributive markers? Do they occur only with the descriptive verbs?

With all verbs, even copulas and stative verbs. They are the primary means of relativisation:

교실에 있는 학생 /kyo.sil ey iss.nun haksayng/ (classroom LOC be-PRS.ATTR student) "the students in the classroom"
어미없는 동물의 새끼 /e.mi eps.nun tongmul uy saykki/ (mother not.exist-PRS.ATTR animal POSS offspring) "an orphaned young animal"
내꺼인 듯 같은 너 /nay.kka i.n tus kath.un ne/ (mine COP-PST.ATTR appearance be.same-PST.ATTR you) "you who seem like you're mine"

[Qwynegold]

Korean (so presumably Japanese as well).

Yes. Japanese has basically two kinds of adjectives, na-adjectives that are similar to nouns (but not identical) and i-adjectives that are similar to verbs. The i-adjectives end in -i, while verbs end in -u, so there are some differences to what happens at the boundary between stem and suffix. Furthermore, adjectives can't take all the conjunctions that verbs do.

Lexicon form/present positive
aruku - walk
ureshii - happy

Past
aruita - walked
ureshikatta - was happy

Negative
arukanai - don't walk
ureshikunai - not happy

Conjunctive
aruite - walk and...
ureshikute - happy and...

Bare stem (similar usage to conjunctive)
aruki-, e.g. aruki-sō - looks like someone is walking/has walked
ureshi-, e.g. ureshi-sō - looks happy

Polite
arukimasu - walk-PRS.POS.POL
not expressed with conjugation for adjectives

Potential
arukeru - can walk
n/a for adjectives

Conditional
arukeba - if someone would walk
ureshikereba - if someone is happy

Passive
arukareru - is walked
n/a for adjectives

Permissive
arukaseru - is allowed/made to walk
n/a for adjectives

Adjectives with tense marking can be used predicatively. I don't know if you can say that they can be used attributively, because in Japanese this would be the same thing as a relative clause.

Neko wa ureshikatta desu.
cat TOP happy-PST be.PRS.POS.POL
The cat was happy.

Ureshikatta neko wa asobimashita.
happy-PST cat TOP play-PST.POS.POL
The cat that was happy played.

[Vijay]

But are adjectives a separate class from verbs in Korean and/or Japanese?

[Travis B.]

It seems like they are a specialized subclass, that can do many of the things normal verbs can do, but not all of them.

[Opalescent Yams]

Right, I think what I was specifically interested in is whether there are languages that have tense-marked attributive adjectives wholly separate from verbs, and if so, how common this is?

I guess the answer seems to be... rare, if attested at all?

Hmmm... what about languages with TAM-marking on nouns? Does anyone know if perhaps some of them have (perhaps noun-like) adjectives or adjective-like structures that also get TAM-marking like the nouns?

[akam chinjir]

I'd have thought that genuine TAM marking implied clausal structure, so that any time you have TAM marking on an attributive adjective, you've got a relative clause (since a relative clause is just a clause used attributively).

(I don't know anything specific about TAM-marking on nouns. Can these be construed as free relatives or something?)

[Opalescent Yams]

Can these be construed as free relatives or something?

I mean that'd stand to reason? But I too know very little about the specifics of the topic.

[zompist]

Hmmm... what about languages with TAM-marking on nouns? Does anyone know if perhaps some of them have (perhaps noun-like) adjectives or adjective-like structures that also get TAM-marking like the nouns?

English? "ex-wife", "future prime minister", "would-be killer", "possible outcome"...

These are lexical rather than inflectional, of course, but you did want "wholly separate from verbs"...

In Nuuchahnulth, nouns can take tense affixes, e.g. house+past = 'what used to be a house', grandfather+past = '(my) late grandfather'. But it may be more accurate to say that roots can take both noun-like and verb-like affixes, the 'outermost' ones determining the syntactic class.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

English.
Oh, sure, only on participles, and only for intransitives (for transitives it's a distinction in voice), but the difference between "the breaking mug" and "the broken mug" is when the breaking takes/took place.

To me, the breaking mug is either meaningless/ungrammatical, or would be a "mug used for breaking". That is, break has to be taken as a transitive verb.