Adjectival agreement vs. adverbial inflection in Balanta

Adjectives modifying singular human nouns in the Ganja dialect of Balanta bear one of two prefixes: u- and a-. It is argued that these prefixes represent two different types of inflection, agreement (u-) and adverbial marking (a-). Alternative analyses based on stage-level vs. individual-level interpretations of adjectives and the individual-event distinction are shown to be insufficient. Finally, the set of adjectival agreement prefixes occurring in other Balanta dialects is considered, and a diachronic explanation based on Kuryłowiczʹs laws of analogical change and Lass’ theory of linguistic exaptation is proposed [J Linguistics 26 (1990) 79–102].