Attributive modification in South American indigenous languages

Abstract The article deals with attributive modification in South American languages. It focuses on descriptive terms that denote properties. First of all, it is observed property possible most, but not all typology constructions argued to constitute a continuum, from syntactically loose nominal expressions, the one hand, morphologically complex structures which are ambiguous between compounding and derivation, other hand. latter involves use lexico-grammatical means such as classifiers. paper also raises question diachronic link – at least for some languages intransitive clauses postnominal terms, often verbal nature.