Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The More Than Missing Perfect

I am beginning to wonder whether Judd did not "invent" the pluperfect out of a desire for symmetry in his Westernized linguistic scheme; the pluperfect form was introduced in Chapter 6, but fails to appear in Chapters 7 and 8. This addition is not as an absurd notion as it might seem: the full system of Devanagari writing (which is used for Sanskrit) includes some signs which are present not because they are used in the language itself, but rather because the Sanskrit scholars were the ultimate marriage of grammar geeks and series completists and could not stand holes in their neatly arranged phonetic system, even though imperfect symmetry is typical of natural language systems. Hawaiian, incidentally, has a particularly asymmetric phonology. The Hawaiian future tense is introduced in Chapter 7, but does not appear in the exercises until the next chapter; thus if the pluperfect (introduced in Chapter 6) had appeared in the exercise for Chapter 7, no longer would I remain perplexed.

Chapter 8 introduces a full set of prepositions to complement the hitherto isolated i. Several of these possess distinct form with either o or a, but Judd has decided to refrain from further explication in this chapter. The use of each preposition with the noun ka hale, "house", appears as a 'declension'. Although this style of presentation is economical, an important consideration for Judd, and useful in distinguishing between the 'genitive' and the 'possessive', I am not convinced that 'case' is a valid concept here; it seems to me a table of prepositions and their direct object. I willingly admit that I could be mistaken in this matter, since I seem to remember that Japanese has a similar "case system". Possibly the difference between my perception and that of Judd merely illustrates the ambiguous boundaries of grammatical categories. The next several chapters introduce the "case system" of the personal pronouns, which should serve as a sufficient test for the presence of cases in Hawaiian.

Chapter 7
1. Ke nana nei lakou i ka omole. They gaze at the bottle.
2. Ua ike au i ke kii. I have seen the picture.
3. Ke noho nei oia. He sits.
4. Ke oki nei oia i ka eke. He cuts the bag in two.
5. Ke hana nei lakou i ka pahu. They made the curtain.
6. Ke haule nei ka pakeke. The bucket falls.
7.  Ua oki oia i ka paku. He has cut the curtain in two.
8. Ke ike nei kakou i kukui.  We see the torch.
9. Ke hoopaa nei oia i ka pulumi. They make fast the umbrella.

Chapter 8
1. Ke ike nei au i ka pahi ma ka pakaukau. I see the knife on the table.
2. Ua hana makou i ke ahi ma ke kapuahi. We have made a fire in the fireplace.
3. Ua lohe makou i ka mahu. We have heard the steam.
4. E hele kakou i ka hale. We shall walk to the house.
5. Ke moe nei lakou ma ka papahele. They lie down along the floor.
6. Ke ku nei lakou ma ka puka o ka hale. They stand by the entrance of the house.
7. Ke ike nei au i ka wai wela ma ke kapuahi. I see the hot water in the fireplace.
8. Ke haule nei ke kiaha mai ka papaaina. The tumbler falls from the dining table.
9. Ke kali nei kakou no ka wai huihui. We wait on account of the cold water.
10. Ua ike makou i ka umu. We have seen the outdoor oven.

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