Ka peka atu au ki tō tari means: I’ll pass by your office.
This sentence uses the verbal particle ‘ka’ which is the most frequent verbal marker in all texts, with a wide range of meanings. At beginner (and even intermediate) levels of reo study, ‘ka’ is often considered as the tense marker used for future tense or an action that comes next after the previous sentence.
However, grammar textbooks note that ‘ka’ does not convey any tense, aspect or mood information. It simply marks that the sentence is a reremahi (or verbal sentence). It’s a relative tense marker, taking its interpretation from the context of the sentence it’s in and grammatically it’s default reading is present tense.
Despite this grammar note, given the common teaching of ‘ka’ as future tense, I find while studying that if ‘ka’ is used, the default interpretation is likely to be future tense.
A common use of ‘ka’ is to introduce a chain of events in a narrative:
Similar to this narrative use, ‘ka’ is often found in the second or later clauses in a series of clauses and acquires its meaning from the earlier clause, further demonstrating its function as a relative verbal marker.