Abstract

At least 28 languages of northern Vanuatu share an unusual possessive classifier reflecting *bula-. This classifier is used with crops and livestock and a varied assortment of other possessions which can include body ornaments, dances, musical instruments, vehicles, toys and aunties. This classifier is conventionally interpreted as denoting valuable possessions or economic property, but surveying its use across northern Vanuatu languages suggests that it is not generally associated with value, and in fact is often specifically avoided in economic contexts. Rather, the core use of *bula– is to mark a relationship in which items are reared or cultivated by the possessor, and it has been extended, sometimes in obscure ways, to analogous relationships such as possessions that are led or held on a cord. However, in the Banks Islands, where the classifier’s associations include shell money, it may have been reinterpreted in certain languages as a term for valuable possessions.

The *bula- classifier is unusual in the typology of Oceanic possessive classifiers, being a regional feature shared by languages that do not form a discrete sub-group and are otherwise conservative in their possessive grammar. Better understanding of its use sheds light on the question of whether it is simply a widely-diffused local innovation, or a remnant of a category of possession that once occurred more broadly among Oceanic languages.

Te Reo-Volume 68-Issue 4-pp. 59–102