The Functional Equivalence of Adjectives as Verbs in Khmer Syntax

This study examines the functional equivalence of adjectives and verbs in Khmer syntax, contending that several lexical items typically classified as adjectives act as verbs within a flexible category system. Unlike many languages that require a copular verb to link subjects with descriptive properties, Khmer, an analytic or isolating language without morphological inflection, raises questions about the classification of its parts of speech. This research explores whether the adjectives traditionally categorized as adjectives in Khmer belong to a separate part of speech or within the verbal class. Drawing on qualitative syntactic analysis, the findings demonstrated that adjectives not only modify nouns but also function as verbs in the sentence. Adjectives act as predicates without the need for linking verbs; they form negative and imperative sentences and co-occur with aspectual markers. This functional equivalence leads to overlap with the verb class within the broader Southeast Asian typological pattern, in which the adjective is not fully distinguished from verbs. Therefore, adjectives in Khmer are best classified as a subclass of verbs rather than a different grammatical category. This paper contributes to Khmer linguistics by clarifying the syntactic behavior of descriptive predicates and broader typological discussions of universal categories of adjective classes and supports the functional equivalence of adjectives and verbs in Khmer syntax.