Category talk:Ainu adjectives

Hi! I'd like to know the history behind this category. The reason why I'm asking this is that Ainu does not have a separate category for adjectives. All the words that look like adjectives because of their English translations are actually intransitive verbs in Ainu. I tried to fix one of the words (quite long time ago), but my change was undone because "we treat lexical adjectives as adjectives. See also Japanese 赤い, for instance." (https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E3%83%95&action=history) However, Ainu is not Japanese and the Japanese so-called i-adjectives cannot be compared with Ainu intransitive verbs that describe stative states. Unlike i-adjectives in Japanese, in Ainu, the all the verbs behave the same, regardless of them being "lexical adjectives" (from whose point of view? English speakers?).

The Ainu entries here in general seem to make many references to Batchelor's dictionary. I haven't checked what it says about "Ainu adjectives" but I have a hunch that Bachelor might have labeled some intransitive verbs as adjectives. I'd like to remind you that Batchelor's dictionary/Ainu grammar is very very old and there are tons of mistakes in it. It should not be used as only source when checking the meaning of Ainu words.

The latest research does not agree with the claim that Ainu has adjectives (first stated in 1942 by Chiri Mashiho who was Ainu native speaker and professor of linguistics, unlike Batchelor). Please refer for example to Bugaeva (2012) p. 470 "There is no morphologically distinctive class of adjectives. The content expressed by adjectives in other languages is expressed by intransitive verbs in Ainu." KWONG (2017), p. 167 "Ainu language makes no distinction between adjectives and verbs. For example, the intransitive verb pirka can express both stative meaning (good/rich/beautiful) and inchoative meaning (become good/rich/beautiful). Therefore, it seems there is no need to set up an independent category for adjectives in Ainu language." And if you can read Japanese, 中川（2001）, p. 11 「その理由を知里は7項目にわたって列挙しているが､それを要約すれば､アイヌ語のいわゆる「形容詞」は､意味的にも形態論的にも統語論的にも､自動詞(知里:1942の用語で言えば完用詞)と,ほとんど区別がないということである. 」

So, could someone explain what is the purpose of this category?

I suggest that all the words in this category should be recategorized as verbs. Best regards, Siljami (talk) 12:31, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * For later reference, we disscused this topic here: Wiktionary_talk:About_Ainu