11 Adjectives in North-East Ambae 279(51) Maresu ngihie mo bei dige.
child that REAL just walk
"That child has just (started to) walk.'
Likewise, negation operates in the same way with adjectives as with other verbs,
both transitive and intransitive. A negative verbal clause is formed by two negative
particles, one of which, hi, occurs pre-verbally, the other, tea, post-verbally. The fol-
lowing examples demonstrate this for the active verb gato speak' (52) and the ad-
jective garea good' (53).
(52) Hi gato tea.
NEC speak NEC
'S/he didn't speak.'(53) Hi garea tea.
NEC good NEC
'It is not good.'
All adverbs and intensifiers modify both active verbs and adjectives in the same
manner, as examples (54)-(57) illustrate.
(54) U mate vorogi.
TEL die without.anything
'S/he died for no reason.'
(55) Mo dige vorogi.
REAL walk without.anything
'S/he walks/is walking barefoot.' (lit. S/he walks/is walking without any-
thing.)
(56) Maresu ngihie u garea mwere.
child that TEL good INTENS
"That child is very good.'
(57) Maresu ngihie mo vi-visi mwere.
child that REAL REDUP-swear INTENS
"That child can really swear/swears a lot.'6 Semantic types
Dixon recognizes thirteen different semantic types that are typically associated
cross-linguistically with words belonging to adjective classes (Ch. i). For the most
part, adjectives in Ambae can be classified as belonging to one of seven of these
different semantic types: DIMENSION, AGE, VALUE, COLOUR, PHYSICAL PROPERTY,
HUMAN PROPENSITY, or DIFFICULTY. For some semantic types there is overlap, such
as with HUMAN PROPENSITY, for which some members are adjectives and others