Nominalized predicates in Vurës, Vanuatu

In Vurës, spoken on the island of Vanua Lava in northern Vanuatu, clauses are categorized as either verbal or nonverbal. A verbal clause has as the head of the predicate a verb, which can be preceded by verbal proclitics or particles. Verbs are classified as either active or stative. While stative verbs can occur underived as the head of either a verbal or nonverbal predicate, active verbs can, for the most part, occur only as the head of a verbal predicate. Active verbs can generally only occur as the head of a noun phrase if the verb is nominalized via reduplication, and such noun phrases can be arguments or adjuncts, but cannot be predicates. There is, however, a clause type with a limited distribution—approximately one percent of clauses in a corpus of 7,095 clauses—in which the head of the predicate is an underived active verb, preceded by o. O is the form of the common noun article, suggesting that these are nominalized predicates. This paper examines the form, functions, and distribution of this predicate type in order to confirm that o in these clauses is the common article marking a nominalized predicate and not a homophonous verbal particle with a specific function.