Zompist Bboard Again

Having just one or a few noun-to-adjective derivational morphemes is boring. For some time now I've been thinking what are all the possible ways of semantic relationship between a noun and its derived adjective and how they could be unified in various categories. Here's some possible derivation patterns I've come up with, presumably corresponding roughly one-to-one with derivational morphemes:

Locative derivations

These include derivations such as place → local or country → domestic. They might be extended with various adverbs or adpositions for various aspects of motion, such as London → London-ILL-ADJ bus 'bus departing for London'.

Temporal derivations

These include derications such as day → diurnal or moment → momentary. May optionally include or be extended to repeating time periods, such as week → weekly.

Visual derivations

E.g. circle → round or human → humanoid.

Olfactory-gustatory derivations

E.g. salt → salty, lemon → lemon flavored or cinnamon → cinnamon flavored / smelling of cinnamon. May also include non food smells.

Having the properties of a concrete noun

E.g. mountain → mountainous, bark → rough. This category could easily be extended to be a catch-all derivation mechanism, or for new, unaccounted for semantic relationships.

Having the properties of an abstract noun

Could be conflated with the previous one, but I'm placing it on its own because it's so productive by itself. Examples include bravery → brave or youth → young. Of course, depending on the language, many derivations would actually be in the reverse direction (as in the first example).

I've got the feeling that I'm barely scratching the surface; I'm not talking about finer distinctions or juggling within said categories, but rather that there are whole classes of adjectives that can't be put in any of the aforementioned groups - what else could be added?

Your visual and olfactory-gustatory categories can be included within the category of having properties of concrete nouns. Something is humanoid if it has (visual) properties of humans.

I think something worthy could be said about particular subtypes of these.

For example, suffixes that have a connotation of being full of something, which seem nice for negative connotations. Hate > hateful (full of hate), Spanish lodo 'mud' > lodoso 'muddy', litigium 'dispute (often but not necessarily legal)' > litigiosus 'fond of disputes, litigious'. Conversely English -less, for the lack or absence of sth: godless, fearless, errorless.

Maybe suffixes about being in the style or manner of sth. Chomskian, Ciceronian, Shakespearian; French (=French-style) clothing, Japanese cuisine.

Latin/Spanish/French have a suffix (-arius/-ero/-(i)er) that attaches only to nouns, and has some agent-like connotation. Somebody (or something) that deals with the noun. Scutum 'shield' > scutarius 'squire', granum 'grain' > granarium 'granary', Old French cheval 'horse' > chevalier 'knight' (via sb who handles horses), cf. Spanish caballero 'gentleman' (via knight). It can be used to form related adjectives: Spanish peliculero/a, from película 'movie', could mean the noun 'movie lover' or the adjective 'movie-loving'. (You could say the equivalent for verbs is -(a,i,-)tor/-(a,e,i)dor/-eur.)

Ser wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:50 pm Latin/Spanish/French have a suffix (-arius/-ero/-(i)er) that attaches only to nouns, and has some agent-like connotation. Somebody (or something) that deals with the noun. Scutum 'shield' > scutarius 'squire', granum 'grain' > granarium 'granary', Old French cheval 'horse' > chevalier 'knight' (via sb who handles horses), cf. Spanish caballero 'gentleman' (via knight). It can be used to form related adjectives: Spanish peliculero/a, from película 'movie', could mean the noun 'movie lover' or the adjective 'movie-loving'. (You could say the equivalent for verbs is -(a,i,-)tor/-(a,e,i)dor/-eur.)

Also note that English -ery, and also StG -erei, are also ultimately derived from Latin -ārius (you're referring to this morpheme, right?), via Old French or, in the case of English, Anglo-Norman.

(Note that this may have actually been loaned into Germanic languages twice, as PGmc *-ārijaz is suspected to be derived from Latin -ārius, yielding the likes of English -er, StG -er, Swedish -are, Icelandic -ari, and so on.