Adjective Classes - A Cross-Linguistic Typology

11 Adjectives in North-East Ambae 275

which is in the state described by ADJ.' Ability for a form to be nominalized with
this suffix is another test for membership of the class of adjectives. Some examples
of adjectives nominalized with -gi are:

angoga 'yellow' angogagi 'a yellow one'

biti 'small' bitigi 'a small one'

hasi 'bad' hasigi 'a bad one'

manivinivi 'thin manivinivigi 'a thin one'

menu 'ripe' menagi 'a ripe one'

mwaso 'alive' mwasogi 'a live one'

-gi nominalizations often occur as the predicate in a non-verbal equational clause,
and in many cases this nominalized expression shows little difference in meaning
from its verbal counterpart as in (36) and (37).

(36) Ngie u biti.
3sg TEL small
'It is small.'

(37) Ngie biti-gi.
3sg small-NR
'It is a/the small one.'
'It is small.'

4.5. VALENCY INCREASE

The options that a predicate has for valency increase is another means for distin-
guishing adjectives from active intransitive verbs. Most active intransitive verbs
have a derived transitive form; most are A-type verbs, only four have been ob-
served as being O-type. However, few adjectives have a derived transitive, and
those that do are all O-type. The causative prefix vaga- only occurs on nine adjec-
tives all of which belong to the semantic types of PHYSICAL PROPERTY or HUMAN
PROPENSITY. Some examples are:

mate 'be dead, die'

sala 'be/become lost'

lenga 'be/become crazy, naughty'

The function and distribution of the valency increasing affixes found in the lan-
guage are shown in Table 4.

4.6. SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS

Verb serialization is a common process in Ambae and verbs from all sub-classes
can occur in different types of serial verb constructions (SVCs). It is rare for two
adjectives to be serialized. Adjectives only occur in causative and manner ambi-
ent SVCs.