You didn't think that the only adjectives in Taruven were the adjectival suffixes, did you? There are proper word-adjectives too, but they're called statives, because they aren't quite like adjectives in English. For one, they are a lot like nouns, a little like places, and a lot like verbs. Stative comes from state, and a stative like, say, halu tired can be translated as to be in a state of tiredness.
Below are several sentences with adjectives in Taruven.
From these examples we can see that:
Basically, Taruven statives are like intransitive verbs (like heal to rest, remember?) with an added be. Imagine that to be is in front of every single stative, so that you have gar to be strong, llev to be salty and šiar to be black.
So, what else does verbs and statives have in common? Well...
... both can be marked for tense, -ra for past and -su for future... in fact, statives can be marked for anything a verb can be marked for. Furthermore, a stative can be marked for anything a noun can be marked for, including number!
Statives are like super-words, the only thing they can't do is have an object! Yes, that means that a stative acting as a verb can have an indirect object:
In this particular case the example cannot be translated as *Strong John/Jane for your sake, as that's rather nonsensical.
Statives are all states (a few verbs are also states though), and to enter or exit a state, for instance enter a state of tiredness by becoming tired we need a verb. It is necessary to derive a verb from the stative and depending on what type of verb you want, there are several possibilities:
-r and -l handles entering and exiting a state, -ge is a causative and makes a transitive verb, while -geke is a double causative and makes a ditransitive. You migh think that the latter is unneccessary, since all verbs and statives can have an indirect object anyway, but without -geke you can't drop the third person animate pronoun ī or its plurals fen they, fa the two of them, they two and fin they few.
Statives are super-words, with the meaning of adjectives, and the behavior of nouns, intransitive verbs and adjectives, depending. To say that something or someone enters a state, or becomes something, it is neccessary to suffix -r for a rapid change or -l for a gradual change. Statives are made transitive with -ge and ditransitive with -geke. To make an intransitive verb into a stative the suffix to use is -ek.
To see an answer, hover over a word in the question.
| -ek | intransitive to stative |
| fa | the two of them, they two, third person dual pronoun (subject) |
| fen | they, third person plural pronoun (subject) |
| fin | they few, third person paucal pronoun (subject) |
| gīl | a sun |
| isse | closed (stative) |
| kell | to fade |
| -l | to change gradually, slowly |
| -ge | stative to transitive |
| -geke | stative to ditransitive |
| -r | to change rapidly, instantly |
| -ra | past tense suffix |
| -su | future tense suffix |
| žyn | a door |
| fear | white (stative) |
| kear | red (stative) |
| linnar | yellow (stative), "day nar" |
| mar | green (stative) |
| sennar | orange (stative) "night nar" |
| var | blue (stative) |