Hawaiian Grammar Review, Part 2

Judd's pseudo-Latin approach leads him to construct a table pronominal declensions. This table is limited to the singular; at this point I can only speculate that the duals and plurals do not have “cases.” Judd might have said that the dual and plural forms in all “cases” are identical, congruent with the nineteenth century belief that English was a marginal case language because the pronouns distinguish subject, object, and possessive.

	First Singular	Second Singular	Third Singular
Nominative	owau au	oe	oia ia
Genitive	a'u o'u	au ou	ana ona
Possessive	ka'u ko'u kuu	kau kou	kana kona
Dative	na'u no'u	nau nou	nana nona
Accusative	ia'u io'u nei/la	ia oe i ou nei/la	ia ia i ona la
Ablative 1 (Agent/Means)	ma o'u nei/la	ma ou nei/la	ma ona nei/la
Ablative 2 (Separation)	mai o'u aku/mai	mai ou aku/mai	mai ona aku/mai
Ablative 3 (Accompaniment)	me au	me oe	me ia
Ablative 4 (Agent with Passive Verb)	e au	e oe	e ia

The Genitive, Possessive, Dative, and Accusative cases are conflations of the simple prepositions a/o, ka/ko, and na/no with a following pronoun, with the exception of the 'affectionate' possessive first singular form kuu. The alienable/inalienable distinction percolates through these forms. The separation of Genitive and Possessive is a marginal but understandable feature of Indo-European languages (my/mine, vester/vestri/vobis). The surprising feature is the four types of ablative, since the first two types are merely a simple preposition plus an alienable Genitive, and the last two are a simple preposition plus the nominative form (nei and la, aku and mai are particles called directionals, and are not limited to these pronominal structures).

Prepositions, in all languages have both simple and compound forms. The compound forms in Hawaiian have this structure: ma/i- + a grammaticalized noun + o (the alienable genitive). This structure is, in essence, no difference from the English compound preposition because of, which is derived transparently from the phrase be the cause of. The diminution of the locative forms from three to two is not surprising, since the Ablative (mai) is always the first to be sacrificed on the altar of Simplicity. The usual choice of o rather than a as the connecting preposition is logical; if an object (e.g., a spearhead) that is inside you must be specified to be inside you, it is probably not an inherent part of your body! If it is an inherent part of your body, you could just use a possessive. Thus, Ke ike nei au i ka pahi maloko o ka maka a ke kanaka, "I see the knife in the eye of the man," in which the knife does not belong in the eye, but the eye is an intrinsic part of the man.

The article in Hawaiian has two allophones (variants), ka and ke. The determination of which one to use differs in Judd from modern sources, but that could be the result of local variation; the differences have never caused me any problems in identifying the article. I have laid out Judd's distribution below, in which # indicates the beginning of the noun, and C indicates that a noun begins with a consonant (except k or p), which receive their own entries. Most entries in the first column use only one form, although three use both, either for euphony or semantic distinction.

	Ka	Ke
#a	x	x
#e	x
#i	x
#o	x	x
#u	x
#C	x
#k		x
#p	x	x

Hawaiian articles come in three flavors: definite (the), semi-definite (a certain, some), and indefinite (a).These articles have only two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. Do you notice that something is missing? In languages with dual number (such as Greek and Hebrew), the dual is often absent outside of the pronominal system and the plural provides for singular and dual. The definite singular articles, ka and ke, you have already met. The definite plural is na, which occurs the name Na Pali, the Cliffs, a particularly scenic royal preserve on Kaua'i.
The semi-definite plurals are kekahi, kahi, hookahi, and wahi. All of these forms are based on the increasing compound of wahi. One of the compound prepositions is kahi, "there where," a conflation of ka wahi. kekahi prefixes the definite article, while hookahi adds a primarily verbal prefix.
The indefinite singular article is he; there are four different indefinite plural articles, the distinctions of which Judd does not describe, consistent with his purpose of instilling basic comprehension of the language. They must have different connotations, however, because the example sentences use a variety, both alone and in combination.

	Singular	Plural
Definite	ka ke	na
Semi-Definite	kekahi kahi hookahi wahi
Indefinite	he	mau poe pae puu