Possession cont. "T-possession"
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2018 10:12 pm
A short note on pronunciation of the prepositions o and a. They are never written with a macron but they are pronounced long when the next syllable contains a long vowel. (I'm not sure if this rule includes diphthongs.) The Māori orthography as prescribed by the Māori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori) is thus not entirely focussed on a 1:1 phonetic representation but is somewhat simplified to help the reader keep a couple of very similar but different words apart, such as a or o "of" and ā or ō "(those) of", the latter of which are always pronounced long. There are a few other words which vary in length according to the surrounding context but are either written with or without a macron, such as the personal article a, and apparently also ngā, the plural "the", which is apparently pronounced short before a short vowel, and the distal locational marker "rā" (whether occurring in the demonstratives such as tērā or occurring as a standalone word), which is pronounced short sentence finally. (I think I've heard and noticed all of these except ngā, which always sounds long to me!)
Now onto the real stuff:
Preposed Possessive Phrases
In the phrases we encountered before, the possessor (whether subordinate or dominant to the possession) follows the possession, introduced by a preposition. This is pretty typical word order for a head-initial language such as Māori. I'll translate these here with the English word order closest to the Māori, but it is not an equivalent difference between the two possibilities. Note that Māori retains at least a trace of the articles of both noun phrases.
This structure opens a nice can of recursive worms and makes it theoretically possible to have phrases such as ā ō ō ā ō ngā wāhine mātua wāhine mātua mātua wāhine, which, if I've counted correctly, should mean "the women's fathers' wives' father's fathers' wives", but obviously that's an abstraction and quite probably no one would ever put more than one inside another as it would be pretty stylistically horrible (although funny!) in any case. Ō ō ō ngā tūpuna tūpuna tūpuna tūpuna = The ancestors' ancestors' ancestors' ancestors. It also gets potentially quite confusing, even with only one nested phrase, when the two nouns phrases, which are now next to each other with nothing to show who belongs where, could conceivably be compound phrases, or not. For example te tupuna wahine means "the female ancestor" and te wahini matua means "the head wife" (in a marriage of multiple wives), so tō te tupuna wahine matua could either mean "the ancestor's head wife" (tō te tupuna wahine matua) or "the female ancestor's father" (tō te tupuna wahine matua). *headsplode*
Preposed possessive phrases are, however, the only possibility for pronouns. You cannot sayngā mātua o koe "the parents of you". You have to say either ōku mātua or aku mātua "your parents" and for that, there are obviously some more rules coming.
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EDIT: Oops! I just realised: because spouses are a-class possessed and ancestors are o-class possessed, the headsplode example would actually be unambiguous, in a further headsploding way:
Now onto the real stuff:
Preposed Possessive Phrases
In the phrases we encountered before, the possessor (whether subordinate or dominant to the possession) follows the possession, introduced by a preposition. This is pretty typical word order for a head-initial language such as Māori. I'll translate these here with the English word order closest to the Māori, but it is not an equivalent difference between the two possibilities. Note that Māori retains at least a trace of the articles of both noun phrases.
- te matua o te wahine = the father of the woman
- te tama a te wahine = the son of the woman's
- te + o = tō
- te + a = tā
- te matua o te wahine = the father of the woman's
→ tō te wahine matua = (the?!) the woman's father
- te tama a te wahine = the son of the woman
→ tā te wahine tama = (the?!) the woman's son
- ngā + o = ō
- ngā + a = ā
- ngā mātua o te wahine = the parents of the woman
→ ō te wahine mātua = (the?!) the woman's parents
- ngā tama a te wahine = the sons of the woman
→ ā te wahine tama = (the?!) the woman's sons
This structure opens a nice can of recursive worms and makes it theoretically possible to have phrases such as ā ō ō ā ō ngā wāhine mātua wāhine mātua mātua wāhine, which, if I've counted correctly, should mean "the women's fathers' wives' father's fathers' wives", but obviously that's an abstraction and quite probably no one would ever put more than one inside another as it would be pretty stylistically horrible (although funny!) in any case. Ō ō ō ngā tūpuna tūpuna tūpuna tūpuna = The ancestors' ancestors' ancestors' ancestors. It also gets potentially quite confusing, even with only one nested phrase, when the two nouns phrases, which are now next to each other with nothing to show who belongs where, could conceivably be compound phrases, or not. For example te tupuna wahine means "the female ancestor" and te wahini matua means "the head wife" (in a marriage of multiple wives), so tō te tupuna wahine matua could either mean "the ancestor's head wife" (tō te tupuna wahine matua) or "the female ancestor's father" (tō te tupuna wahine matua). *headsplode*
Preposed possessive phrases are, however, the only possibility for pronouns. You cannot say
___________
EDIT: Oops! I just realised: because spouses are a-class possessed and ancestors are o-class possessed, the headsplode example would actually be unambiguous, in a further headsploding way:
- tā te tupuna wahine matua = te wahine matua a te tupuna = the ancestor's head wife
- tō te tupuna wahine matua = te matua o te tupuna wahine = the female ancestor's father