(Sorry about the delay - I was traveling most of yesterday)
Lesson 12 in Judd's grammar introduces the complex prepositions, those which contain multiple words, similar to the English prepositon in front of. The majority of the English prepositions are composed this way, although the attrition of language has disguised the etymology of many English words. The preposition above, for instance, which appears to the diachronically blind as a straightforward two-syllable preposition of uncertain parentage, has a long history of prepositional accretion and linguistic erosion. The original core preposition was uf, the Anglo-Saxon form of up. Some speakers felt that uf alone was insufficient to express the up-ness they desired, and therefore attached an "on" to form ufan, "up on" Eventually that was deemed too weak, and be "by" prefixed itself to ufan to produce bufan "by up on". After the users of bufan had forgotten the intial suffixation of an to uf, they prefixed another an, creating anbufan "on by up on", which attrition wore down to the two-syllable word we use today.
The structure of all but two of the prepositions introduced in this lesson follow this analysis: ma- or i- prefixed to the core word, usually followed by the inalienable preposition o. The core word can be adverbial, such lalo "downwards", or a fully realized noun, such as uka "interior". Although the prepositions shown in the lesson all bear the prefix ma-, the choice between ma- and i- reflects the difference between the accusative and the ablative. In Latin, certain prepositions, such as sub "under", take the accusative or the ablative depending on whether the intent is to indicate motion or location; the same distinction applies to the Hawaiian prefixes. The inalienable preposition o is the usual third component; presumably one can replace o with a when appropriate. I must confess that the sources I have consulted on the o-a distinction have further perplexed me.
As for the exercise, the first appearance of the Hawaiian dog ('ilio) is notable. Hawaiian dogs were hairless and non-barking and bred for food rather than to chase game. The muteness of the breed was such a defining characteristic that the mythical dogs of Barking Sands recieved the "gift" of making noise from a god. I can relate to the chickens in Sentence 8, since on my recent trip to Kauai, I crept down a steep trail to a lovely waterfall (Kilahiwai Falls, or Wailele Kilahiwai). On the other side of the pool which lay at the base of the waterfall a family of chickens lived under a log (although it may not have been gray - it was covered in foliage). Kauai has been infested with chickens ever since a storm in the nineties, when the farmers let loose many chickens to ride out the storm and some never came back. There are no large predators on Kauai (which might explain the lack of hunting dogs), so the chickens multiplied.
(In case anybody was wondering, the post title was referring to this)
Lesson 12
1. Ke ike nei au i ka lio eleele. I know the black horse.
2. Ke noho nei ke kanaka iloko o ka hale ulaula. The man sits within the red house.
3. Ua ike makou i kekahi mau manu keokeo. We have seen some (kekahi mau) white birds.
4. Ke ku nei ka ilio haeleele mawaho o ka hale keokeo. The brown dog stands outside the red house.
5. Ke paani nei na keiki mawaho o ka hale oma'oma'o. The children play outside the green house.
6. Ke holo nei ka puaa ulaula ikai. The red pig runs toward the sea. (Gadarene swine?)
7. Heaha ka inoa o kou lio huapala. What is the name of his chestnut horse?
8. Ke noho nei na moa ulaula malalo o ke kumulaau ahinahina. The red chickens live underneath the gray tree trunk.
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