Reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European Quality Modifier Construction: a Preliminary Account Based on Four Ancient IE Languages

After a brief introduction on the definition of the adjective class in PIE, this paper offers a text-based, quantitative analysis of the quality modifier construction (that is, the “adjective” in functional-typological terms) in 4 ancient IE languages (rig-Vedic Sanskrit, Hittite, Homeric Greek and Classical Latin). In practical terms, we gather every “adjective” construction from a representative sample of each language, then we analyse the internal structure of these constructions, classifying them according to 7 construction types: simple adjectives, de-adverbial adjectives, denominative adjectives, deverbal adjectives, participles, prefixed adjectives and compound adjectives ; the frequency of each construction type is established, distinguishing type and token frequency. Some reflections on the reconstruction of the PIE adjective class in the light of these data conclude the paper, showing that the classification of PIE as a language with “verb-like” adjectives is more reasonable than usually thought.