Tono means: To send, to apply for.
“Tono” popped in an example sentence I was studying the other day:
I was studying this sentence in combination with:
I’ve been looking at these two sentences for a couple of reasons. The first of which is that they’re using negating constructions that I haven’t learned yet. I’ve mainly negated verbal sentences with “kāore” and sentences with noun phrases using “ehara”. Harlow’s grammar notes that ‘kīhai’ is not often used, but can be used to negate verb phrases introduced with the past tense ‘i’. “E kore… e” is described by Te Aka as a strong future negative “will not”.
The main reason I’ve been looking at these sentences is that they’re examples of situations where the particle ‘tonu’ follows the negative word instead of following the verb. The particle ‘tonu’ roughly translates to ‘still’ as in:
Tonu is primarily a postposed particle, which means it comes after the nucleus of the sentence. In a verbal sentence, it generally follows the verb directly. However, the online learning platform which is used for my mahi kāinga included some sentences above the level I’m currently studying at which I’ve been looking to understand better:
In each of these examples, tonu moves to follow the negative word (unless another particle follows it, as with “kāore ano” used to negate a “kua” sentence.) In the grammars I have, I haven’t been able to identify the rules for when/how the particle might move to follow ‘kāore’ but samples of reo Māori text online suggest it’s a common construction. The sentences using “e kore… e” and “kīhai” above are from the pukapuka He Iti Kahurangi which I’m going to pick up a copy of from the library to study further.
All that to say: The point of today’s post is “here’s a thing it seems like you can do in te reo Māori which I don’t entirely understand yet, but which is good to know when reading reo Māori texts”.