Derivation of adjectives from nouns in -us.

[Michael Zwingli]

I'll apologize in advance for another idiosyncratic question. These odd questions interest me, so here goes...

Apart from -alis (and, perhaps, -ilis and -atus) what derivational suffix was commonly used in Latin for deriving adjectives from nouns in -us? Surely, -ius did so as well, but one cannot know from the morphemics whether the result is an adjective or another noun (damn those Latians)! Specifically, I am wondering if adjectival -us was ever used, such that the noun and it's derived adjective are of the same morphological/morphemic form? It might represent a fantasy, but I seem to recall seeing nouns and adjectives of the same morophology, but cannot remember what they might be.

 

[Clemens]

I'll apologize in advance for another idiosyncratic question. These odd questions interest me, so here goes...

Apart from -alis (and, perhaps, -ilis and -atus) what derivational suffix was commonly used in Latin for deriving adjectives from nouns in -us? Surely, -ius did so as well, but one cannot know from the morphemics whether the result is an adjective or another noun (damn those Latians)! Specifically, I am wondering if adjectival -us was ever used, such that the noun and it's derived adjective are of the same morphological/morphemic form? It might represent a fantasy, but I seem to recall seeing nouns and adjectives of the same morophology, but cannot remember what they might be.

A host of endings are used to derive adjectives from nouns, some of which were no longer productive in the Classical period, and the endings show what kind of adjective you're dealing with. So from the noun fōrma, we can have fōrmālis, formal, model, theoretical, or fōrmōsus, beautiful (literally "full of form"), for example. Not all endings are liable to be used with all nouns.

 

[Serenus]

I would definitely appreciate a serious linguistic take on the exact behaviour of Latin derivational suffixes, if it could be brought about or if it exists already (?). In the usual reference grammars, as you likely know, all we get is a list of them at best...

Something to bear in mind too is the -us 4th declension suffix. There are many -us -a -um participles with a verbal noun -us (genitive -ūs) homophone of the 4th declension, e.g. aditus.

 

[Michael Zwingli]

In the usual reference grammars, as you likely know, all we get is a list of them at best...

Yes. I have found that deeper investigations exist, usually from university presses (and oddly, many of these are in German, which does me no good unless I am willing to learn German to learn Latin), but are generally out of print for lacking economic viability from the perspective of publishers. We are left with the more introductory reference grammars, such as Allen and Greenough, which render only a "surface analysis" (to use a linguistic term). Sometimes one can spot old things in the better-stocked "old bookstores", though.