Tēnā rā koe e hoa,
Okay, I'm back again with more questions concerning the maori language. Recently in Riki's posts, I've noticed Maori possesive pronouns starting with ng-, such as ngōu, ngōku, etc. Given that the t- was replaced with the ng- I have assumed that these are plural forms. I'm slightly familiar with making plurals in words like tēnei, tēnā, tēlā, tōku, tōu, tōna... etc., by deleting the t- at the beginning of the word, which I have assumed is a remnant of the singular definite article te. So is the ng- at the beginning of these possesives a kind of plural form, and if so can this ng- form be used with the other determiners, such as tēnei or taua, to make them plural instead of deleting the t- in the beginning?
t substitution (which is what it would be called) only occurs in a few dialects (such as the one I speak). It is not an overall feature of NZ Māori - where t-deletion is the norm (on the East Coast, South Island and South Western coast and the centre of the North Island). In the far north, 'w' generally replaces 't' (however, I haven't seen it being used to pluralise all 't' determiners - it seems to me that speakers use 'w' when 'w' glides occur between vowels such as ko wēna).
Ng can be used to pluralise tēnei and taua. However, standard NZ Māori 'tētahi' is 'tētehi' in my dialect, and its plural form, ngētehi, can also act as singular (which I guess must be confusing for a lot of people who don't speak my dialect!).
In Hawaiian, some words with passive suffixes are only passive when used with the causative/simulative ho'o, and some verbs with passive suffixes are used as verb transitives, verb intransitives, or verb statives. In earlier Hawaiian, one way to make an imperative sentence was through passivizing the verb like in Maori, but as far as I know it is now rarely used in conversation, but quite common in the chants which I'm reading in He Mo'olelo no Kamapua'a. Also, some verbs with nominative suffixes in Hawaiian have different meanings from their bases. It is much more common in Hawaiian to passivize verbs with the the particle 'ia and to nominalize verbs with the particle 'ana, which are now both written seperately from the verbs, than to make extensive use of the suffixes. Does the Maori language have these particles 'ia and 'ana in addition to it's suffixes?
Māori has no glottal stops so when I do list the cognates they may not be recognisable at first. Māori has a plethora of passive suffixes and nominalisation suffixes. They are written at the end of the word, and are still identified as being part of the word rather than acting seperately and independent from it.
The passive suffixes are listed below, with the pronominalising suffix in brackets -
hia (hanga), kia (Hawaiian 'ia) (Hawaiian 'ana, kanga), mia (manga), ria (ranga), tia (tanga), whia (whanga), ngia (nga), ea (anga), whina (whanga), hina (hanga), mina (manga), kina (kanga), rina (ranga), ina (inga), a (nga, anga), na (nga), nga (nga, anga).
Sorry, one more question. How do you negate class inclusion sentences (He akonga ahau) and equational sentences (Ko Mamo tōku ingoa) in the Maori language.
Nominal sentences (including sentences of possession and actor emphatic i.e. māku, nāku etc etc) are all negated via 'ehara'.
E.g. ehara au i te akonga - I am not a student.
Ehara tōku ingoa i a Mamo. However, some speakers do accept 'ehara tōku ingoa ko Mamo'.
Ehara nāku te tamaiti i whakamamae ki te mamae!
I didn't inflict the child with pain!
However, an older way found in manuscripts would negate actor emphatics like this -
ehara i a au te tamaiti i whakamamae ki te mamae!
where the possessive particle transforms in to 'i' (however, whether i is acting as locational or object marker I don't know - I suspect locational).
Sorry for not typing up the rules to stress words in Māori. I've been busy lately. It's on my to do list however.