Test Cases

Since I have read Judd's Lessons 9 & 10, I'll concede that Hawaiian does indeed have cases to a greater extent than English, although not to a much greater extent. You may protest that English does not have cases, and you would be wrong. English has cases, but is not a case language. A case language has a systematic declensional system used for virtually all nouns (even Latin has some defective declensions, such as nihil), but a language which possesses cases need only possess them in a few words. The refuge of moribund cases is often the conservative arena of pronouns, relative and pronominal, and thus it stands with English. Although there have been rumors of the death of whom, the English cases (nominative, genitive, and accusative) still reside most strongly in the personal pronouns (I, my/mine, me; you, your/yours, you; he, his, him; she, her/hers, her; we, our/ours, us; they, their/theirs, them; who, whose, whom). It is not surprising, therefore, that the best evidence of cases in Hawaiian comes from that language's personal pronouns. The legitimate cases for Hawaiian appear to be: nominative, genitive, possessive, dative, and accusative. The genitive-possessive case distinction, incidently, does not seem to be the same as the o-a distinction. Judd claims that there is also an ablative case, but I am not convinced. Even if he had called it a prepositional case, such as exists vestigially in Russian, there is too much variation in the markers (ma, mai, me, e) for it to constitute a legitimate case. Judd not only undermines his own system of presentation, but even descends into grammatical gibberish in Lesson 10 when he says that the first two forms of the ablative (ma, mai) take the genitive case, whereas the latter two (me, e) take the nominative case. What Judd is describing is various prepositions plus the appropriate case for the object of the preposition, rather than a separate case.

Prepositions taking the nominative case seem a little strange, so let us examine more closely why me and e would take the nominative case. The preposition me means "with", which indeed would take the ablative in Latin; the concepts of "with" and "and", however, are closely connected, and sometimes the latter is derived from the former. If the underlying concept of me is conjunction ("and") rather than accompaniment ("with"), the use of the nominative would be appropriate. The other preposition which takes the nominative, e, indicates the agent of a "passive" verb (although, per usual, Judd neglects to provide an example). Since the object of the preposition performs the action, this use of the nominative makes sense as a contextual practice, even though the recipient of the action (the contextual direct object) is the grammatical subject, and therefore is in the nominative case.

So Hawaiian has five cases in the personal pronouns, whereas  English has either three or four, depending on whether my and mine are separate English case forms.

Lesson 9
1. Ke waiho nei au i ka o ma ka pakaukau. I place the fork on the table.
2. Ke hiamoe nei ia ma kahi moe. He sleeps in the sleeping place.
3. Ke kolo nei oia ma ka papahele. He crawls on the floor.
4. Ke pii nei lakou. They climb.
5. Ke kali nei oia no makou. They wait for us.
6. Ua hana lakou i ke kukui. They have made the torch.
7. E hakaka lakou. They will fight.
8. Ua holo lakou mai ka hale pohaku aku. They have run away from the stone house (bonitos can't run).
9. Ke ku nei laua ma ka puka aniani. They two stand at the window.
10. Ua ike makou i ka wahie. We have seen the firewood.

Lesson 10
1. Ke waiho nei oia i ka barena ma ka pahu. I place the bread in the box.
2. Ke inu nei ia i ka waiu. He drinks milk.
3. Ua ai oia i ka eke laiki. He has eaten the rice bag.
4. Ua ai lakou i ka uhapuaa. They have eaten the ham.
5. Ke komo nei oia i ka hale laau. He enters the frame house.
6. Ua ike makou i ka alani, ka ipu pu a me ka ipu haole. We have seen the present for the chief (or god), a squash, and a watermelon.
7. Ua waiho lakou i ka pahu huamoa ma ka papa aina. They have placed the box of hen's eggs on the ground
8. Ke hele nei makou i ka lanai.We walk to the porch.
9. Ua nalo na lanahu o ke ahi. The coals of the fire have vanished.
10. Ua nana makou i ka pakaukau. We have gazed at the table.