Adjective Classes - A Cross-Linguistic Typology

11 Adjectives in North-East Ambae 281

head of an NP. Also they can be derived with the causative prefix vaga- to form

a multiplicative, which can be either the head of a VP or modify a verb.

7 Word class overlap

Non-cognate semantic overlap between word classes is extremely rare in Ambae. I
have found only one example in my data, between a noun and an active intransitive
verb (tai- 'excrement' (n.), deo 'defecate' (v.)). I have no examples of overlap between
adjectives and nouns or verbs. This lack can be explained by the fact that, as dis-
cussed above (§2), some words in Ambae are precategorial, meaning that it is pos-
sible to have underived words being members of more than one word class. In such
cases it is possible to have underived forms occurring as both noun and verb, or verb
and adjective. Otherwise, where semantic overlap occurs, a word occurs underived
in one word class and has a derived form that is a member of a separate class. For
example, all adjectives can be nominalized with the suffix -gi (§4.4). There is not a
great deal of overlap between the adjective and verb classes. Nine adjectives have de-
rived causative transitive verb forms (§4.5) and a small group of transitive verbs can
be prefixed with the anti-causative prefix ma- to form an adjective. These adjectives
describe a state or spontaneous event and an agentive argument, representing the A
of the underived transitive verb cannot be expressed.

volo 'break sth' mavolo 'break (intr), be broken'

utu 'break sth into pieces' mautu 'break (intr), be broken into pieces'

lingi 'pour, spill sth' malingi 'spill (intr), be spilt'

visa 'split sth' mavisa 'split (intr), be split'

Note that these derived adjectives can be demonstrated to be incorporated into the
class of adjectives by virtue of the fact that they can be further derived by the nom-
inalization suffix -gi. However, they cannot modify nouns.

(58) *Go=bete na hue ma-volo.
2ScSP=give ART knife ANTi=break
'Give (me) the broken knife.'

8 Ordering of adjectives in the NP

It is rare for more than one adjective to modify the head noun in an NP. As dis-
cussed in the following section (§9), it is actually much more common for adjec-
tives to occur with a predicative function than with an attributive function. I have
no natural examples with more than two adjectives modifying a noun. In elicited
examples I have been told that any order is acceptable.