Previous literature (Jelinek et al. 1998, Dedrick & Casad 1990, Molina et al 1999, Harley, Haugen & Tubino-Blanco in prep.) has primarily characterized Hiaki adjectives as inflectionally comparable to nouns, particularly in predicative positions. Like nouns, they can be verbalized with -tu in predicate position but do not themselves directly take TAM2 suffixes according to Harley, Haugen & Tubino-Blanco (in prep.). In argument position, adjectives are distinguished by a specific accusative case allomorph -k, distinct from the nominal suffix -ta. We demonstrate that although many adjectives do more or less follow these patterns, there are variations within the overall pattern, and several subpatterns that can be observed with particular lexical items. We also document the existence of stem ‘augments’ which appear to have a verbalizing function for some adjectives in specific TAM contexts.
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