Thai Adjectives And Verbs

[Richard W]

When speaking English, Thais often seem to treat English adjectives as verbs, and they frequently use 'do you' with adjectives ('Do you happy') and 'are you' ('Are you know...') with verbs. Semantically, the two boundary between the two categories is not clear-cut - some European languages have 'stative' verbs, e.g. Latin's caleo 'be hot' and absum 'be absent'. English to own is similar, and it is noteworthy that one hardly ever uses the progressive form, e.g. *It happened while I was owning that flat.

Is there a difference between adjectives and verbs in Thai? If so, what is it? I'm hoping for a test based on the constructions one can use the words in.

[sukhont]

Verbs and Adjectives in Thai language are not the same. However, I accepted that many Thais use them incorrectly because most of Thai speak Thai only. We don't use English is our first language.

In Thai, คุณศัพท์ kunnasup mean adjective and กริยา kriya mean verb. It's diferent.

As in English "beautiful" is adjective, in Thai, "สวย suay" is adjective as well.

As in English "like" can be verb, in Thai, "ชอบ chob" is also verb.

when u want to say " i like beautiful women", u can say " chan/phom chob puying suay"

chan/phom = I

chob(verb) = like

puyin(noun) = women

suay(adj) = beautiful.

but the point is normally we don't use "is" or "do" in Thai sentense so some Thais don't know how to use it.

For example.

I'm beautiful girl = chan phen khon suay

(chan=I, phen= is,am,are, Khon = human, suay = beautiful)

this sentence is the same stucture as English,right?

however, u can said I'm beautiful = chan suay

For this sentence, u will see that no "is" in the Thai sentense.

so I think Thais who don't use English or practise it oftenly can get confused how to use "to do" and "to be".

i'm just a fatty girl, not a beautiful one

Edited July 22, 2006 by sukhont

[Rikker]

Here's the thing, though: the word "คุณศัพท์" has been coined in Thai fairly recently, and I'm almost certain was coined to correspond to the English word "adjective." Just as the formal "proper" grammar of English has been arbitrarily affected by the grammar of the the Latin (e.g. no splitting infinitives), so it seems that English is having a comparable affect on the study of Thai grammar.

If you look at the classic grammar textbook หลักภาษาไทย by กำชัย ทองหล่อ, there's no mention of คุณศัพท์ as a part of speech. He gives คำนาม คำสรรพนาม คำกริยา คำวิเศษณ์ คำบุพบท คำสันธาน and คำอุทาน. Some have also argued for the existence of คำนิบาต, which exists in RID 1982 (พจนานุกรมฉบับราชบัณฑิตยสถาน พ.ศ. 2525) but has been killed again in RID 1999 (2542). Before the emergence of English as the de facto world language, I think it's safe to say that Pali and Sanskrit grammar were the greatest source of influence on Thai.

Thai grammarians (I'd love to find out just who, but I haven't earnestly looked into it yet) have subdivided the part of speech วิเศษณ์ into กริยาวิเศษณ์ (adverbs) and คุณศัพ์ (adjectives). And although these two subdivisions are mentioned parenthetically in the preface to the Royal Institute's Dictionaries starting in RID 1982, no dictionary that I've seen that labels words individually in their entries as anything besides วิเศษณ์. If the difference between Thai verbs and adjectives is hard to pinpoint exactly, I'm of the opinion that the distinction between Thai adverbs and adjectives is even muddier!

It seems, Sukhont, that your defintion of "wrong" use of Thai is tied to a speaker's lack of knowledge of foreign languages like English. With all due respect, I think that's a misleading criterion for correct usage. Even the traditional Thai grammar is grounded heavliy in Pali/Sanskrit with สนธิ and สมาส, etc., but I get the feeling that the tide of opinion in the circles of highly educated Thais is turning away from this traditional viewpoint as more folks ask, "Why should our language be like Sanskrit? Why can't it just be Thai?" I would pose the same question: Why should it be like English?

Now, I haven't devised the test that Richard is looking for, and I'm not sure I have the ปัญญา to do so. But I think it's a great topic for discussion, provided we approach things empirically without preconceptions of what is right or wrong, but try to ascertain whether there is any actual grammatical difference between what Thais call กริยา, and what they call วิเศษณ์ (or คุณศัพท์), by trying to find sentences where one or the other can be used, but not both.

Richard, I'm sure you've got other thoughts on the topic, and maybe even some preliminary test sentences cooked up? If so, let's hear them. Hopefully it will inspire me to come up with some useful observations myself.

Edited July 23, 2006 by meadish_sweetball

[sukhont]

Hi,Richard and Rikker.

As you, Rikker, said

"Thai grammarians (I'd love to find out just who, but I haven't earnestly looked into it yet) have subdivided the part of speech วิเศษณ์ into กริยาวิเศษณ์ (adverbs) and คุณศัพ์ (adjectives)."

It's correct. the word "วิเศษณ์" works as adverb or adjective in English. We don't have the the word "คุณศัพท์" in Thai gramma. คุณศัพท์ is use for the translation of adjective in English-Thai dictionary.

In Thai gramma, we have only วิเศษณ์ (a words or group of words which is used as adverb or adjective

if วิเศษณ์ works as an adverb,we can called especially กริยาวิเศษณ์

I thought Richard mean about about the different between verb and adjective, not adjective vs adverbs.

The two bookes u use are good reference for Thai gramma.

[Richard W]

Richard, I'm sure you've got other thoughts on the topic, and maybe even some preliminary test sentences cooked up? If so, let's hear them. Hopefully it will inspire me to come up with some useful observations myself.

I've nothing very positive to say. There might be test sentences using the past in ได้ or comparison using กว่า, but any restrictions here may be a matter of meaning rather than grammar. (I have always regarded 'Colourless green ideas dream furiously' and 'The piano played the man' as grammatical - to me their deficiency has been the difficulty in assigning them meanings.)

The difference may be borderline as with 'stative' verbs in English. A definition of 'stative' verbs in English is verbs that do not use the progressive form, such as 'own', 'possess', 'be'. However, idioms can still force the use of the progressive from, as in, 'I certainly won’t be owning a copy!', and compounds may frequently use the progressive, as in 'I have been being good' meaning 'I've been behaving properly.'

[In the Rai!]

I am sorry but I am a little confused. The OP asked if in Thai there is a difference between Verbs and Adjectives in the Thai language.

Well If this is the question you wanted the answer to, than the answer is most definately yes.

Verb = a doing word (or of action)

Adjective = is to describe a noun

Every language has verbs and adjectives they just have different names.

The only difference is when you use them. In english the order must be (opinion,size,colour,shape,age,material and than the noun)Adjective than noun.

example= a great big, round, fresh, chicken burger. (minus the colour)

In Thai the noun goes first.

example= wan ron (day hot) ma yai (dog big)

I hope this is what you are after I was a bit confused by the original question...

In The Rai!

[Richard W]

I am sorry but I am a little confused. The OP asked if in Thai there is a difference between Verbs and Adjectives in the Thai language.

Well If this is the question you wanted the answer to, than the answer is most definately yes.

Verb = a doing word (or of action)

Adjective = is to describe a noun

In what ways are owning and stinking actions? Note that in English, the transitive verb 'fear' and the phrase 'be afraid of' have the same meaning, but 'fear' is a verb and 'afraid' is an adjective. The difference lies in how we construct sentences with the words.

In Latin we have the verbs absum, adsum, caleo meaning 'to be absent', 'to be present', 'to be hot' - note that they are best translated as adjectives in English.

Hebrew has a whole class of verbs best translated as adjectives, such as qaton 'to be small'.

Every language has verbs and adjectives they just have different names.

Possibly, but a paper claiming that had to admit that one language has only 4 adjectives. (I think it was 4 - it might have been 8.)

example= wan ron (day hot) ma yai (dog big)

But we also have khon chuay 'helper'. How does one tell that ron is an adjective like English 'hot' rather than a verb like Latin 'caleo'? Is เหม็น [R]men an adjective like English smelly or a verb like English stink?

[In the Rai!]

Richard W,

I am still not convinced, the word for smelly is เหม็น which is used as a verb IMO. The adjective is ตุ duu (stink) Both are used in Thai the same as English with men as a verb and duu as an adjective.

I dont know bugger all about Latin so I can not comment, but with Thai and English i still believe that gramatically they are used the same way.

[Richard W]

I am still not convinced, the word for smelly is เหม็น which is used as a verb IMO. The adjective is ตุ duu (stink)

Doesn't the infrequent word ตุ [L]tu refers to a particular type of bad smell?

FWIW (not much, I fear), Ratchabandit lists เหม็น as both verb and adjective.

Interestingly, เหนื่อย [L]nueai 'tired' is listed as a verb.

If you look at the SEAlang Thai dictionary resources you will see that the parts of speech listed in the pull-down menu has a general category of 'verb', but no general category of 'adjective'. (It does have 'demonstrative adjective' and 'interrogative-indefinite adjective', but they're not relevant to this discussion.) This at least suggests that they could find no workable way of distinguishing verbs and adjectives in Thai.

[Rikker]

Can the word ตุ be used independently? From my experience it has to be contextualized with either เหม็นตุ or กลิ่นตุ (or alternately เหม็นตุๆ or กลิ่นตุๆ), which means it can be called either "adjective" or "adverb" in English terminology.

So ตุ is a a word that apparently can't be used as a verb. Asking my wife, I tried to use it as a verb in every way I could imagine, and she rejected them all. Can anyone else construct a sentence with ตุ as verb that a Thai will accept as grammatical? Hmm... so what makes an adjective/adverb usable as a verb or not?

Now, different thought:

In the Rai, what part of speech would you say that เหม็น is in the instance of กลิ่นเหม็น? กลิ่น is clearly a noun--so would apparently make เหม็น an adjective by the "basic" definition.

And how about a word like อ้วน in ไม่อยากอ้วน versus คนอ้วน. One is a verb "I don't want to be fat" the other is a noun "fat person."

The point is, there's no obvious distinction. A Thai verb can very often be used in some way like an adjective, and vice versa.

I haven't come up with a test to show a demonstrable difference yet. But it's out there awaiting discovery...

Edited August 18, 2006 by Rikker

[bannork]

Can the word ตุ be used independently? From my experience it has to be contextualized with either เหม็นตุ or กลิ่นตุ (or alternately เหม็นตุๆ or กลิ่นตุๆ), which means it can be called either "adjective" or "adverb" in English terminology.

So ตุ is a a word that apparently can't be used as a verb. Asking my wife, I tried to use it as a verb in every way I could imagine, and she rejected them all. Can anyone else construct a sentence with ตุ as verb that a Thai will accept as grammatical? Hmm... so what makes an adjective/adverb usable as a verb or not?

Now, different thought:

In the Rai, what part of speech would you say that เหม็น is in the instance of กลิ่นเหม็น? กลิ่น is clearly a noun--so would apparently make เหม็น an adjective by the "basic" definition.

And how about a word like อ้วน in ไม่อยากอ้วน versus คนอ้วน. One is a verb "I don't want to be fat" the other is a noun "fat person."

The point is, there's no obvious distinction. A Thai verb can very often be used in some way like an adjective, and vice versa.

I haven't come up with a test to show a demonstrable difference yet. But it's out there awaiting discovery...

No, you are wrong about อ้วน, in your first example ไม่อยาก means I don't want to( followed either by a verb or an adjective, the latter in English must be preceded by the verb to be, but in Thai this is unnecessary), this doesn't distract it from being an adjective. ie ผมเเก่ I (am) old, no need in Thai for the verb to be but it doesn't stop เเก่ being an adjective.

In your second example คนอ้วน a fat person อ้วน is clearly an adjective, adding to the description of the noun คน, the only difference to English is the positioning, namely, after the noun rather than before.

[Rikker]

No, you are wrong about อ้วน, in your first example ไม่อยาก means I don't want to( followed either by a verb or an adjective, the latter in English must be preceded by the verb to be, but in Thai this is unnecessary), this doesn't distract it from being an adjective. ie ผมเเก่ I (am) old, no need in Thai for the verb to be but it doesn't stop เเก่ being an adjective.

Come now, I think it's a bit too fuzzy an issue to be making declarations of wrongness and rightness don't you?

What you have endeavored to explain here is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to discount things from being adjectives, I'm trying to say that much of the time they are grammatically the same thing. I'm not saying there isn't any, but can you explain the grammatical difference between ไม่อยากอ้วน or ไม่อยากตาย or ไม่อยากเป็น? If you say "อ้วน is an adjective and เป็น and ตาย are verbs," that's circular reasoning.

Things are a certain part of speech because of how they behave in the syntax of a sentence. To scientifcally determine what part of speech a word is would seem to require differentiating them into different classes based on what places in the sentence they can be in.

The thing we are questing for here, then, is syntactic structures where a Thai "verb" works, but not an "ajdective" or vice versa. If they always interchangeable, then they must be the same thing. Again, remember that I'm not saying they *are* the same, I'm just looking for the way to systematically determine their grammatical difference.

Also: In my second example คนอ้วน that you quoted, yes, I was pointing out that it modifies the noun, and is thus adjectivelike.

[bannork]

The meaning often makes things clear as to the function of a word, for example,' the people are revolting'- in this case is 'revolting' an adjective or verb?

It could be either, depending on the previous or following words.

With your examples of อ้วน ตาย เป็น related to อยาก, it must be noted that with อยาก the grammar can take 2 roads, either verb or adjective, as the verb to 'be' can do in English in the example above.

A quick check of the meaning will reveal the grammatical function of the surrounding words.

[meadish_sweetball]

What if you had no knowledge of English or any other European language, and had never been taught Western grammar, but still felt the need to divide Thai words into groups based on their characteristics.

Would there be any point in assigning a group with the same boundaries as "adjectives"? If อ้วน behaves just like verbs in all relevant cases, why assign it a special class?

[In the Rai!]

Agreed,

lets move on and use it the way it is supposed to be used rather than sitting here arguing about what group it falls under.

I personally think we have are own thoughts on this. I too agree with Bannork on this one and there is nothing that will change my mind.

Lets agree to agree and use it how we know!

In The Rai!

[mike_l]

Richard, I'm sure you've got other thoughts on the topic, and maybe even some preliminary test sentences cooked up? If so, let's hear them. Hopefully it will inspire me to come up with some useful observations myself.

I've nothing very positive to say. There might be test sentences using the past in ได้ or comparison using กว่า, but any restrictions here may be a matter of meaning rather than grammar. (I have always regarded 'Colourless green ideas dream furiously' and 'The piano played the man' as grammatical - to me their deficiency has been the difficulty in assigning them meanings.)

The difference may be borderline as with 'stative' verbs in English. A definition of 'stative' verbs in English is verbs that do not use the progressive form, such as 'own', 'possess', 'be'. However, idioms can still force the use of the progressive from, as in, 'I certainly won’t be owning a copy!', and compounds may frequently use the progressive, as in 'I have been being good' meaning 'I've been behaving properly.'

Hi Richard, I came across this PDF file which seems to do something like this, classifiying verbs based on whether they can be used in with กว่า, with กำลัง, with a causative ให้ etc. I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but it's along those lines anyway.

http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/research/rr...20in%20Thai.pdf

[Richard W]

I came across this PDF file which seems to do something like this, classifiying verbs based on whether they can be used in with กว่า, with กำลัง, with a causative ให้ etc. I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but it's along those lines anyway.

It's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. The division may be overdone, but the identification of adjectives is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

Thanks.