Horoi means: To wash, clean.
For today’s revision I’m going to refer back to the concept of a ‘phrase’ in te reo Māori. This was mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, one introducing the concept and the other breaking down a multi-phrase sentence into smaller components.
Māori sentences are made up of different types of phrase, which can broadly be broken up on verb phrases, noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Verb phrases commonly beging with a verbal particle (specifying the tense, aspect or mood of the phrase). Noun phrases begin with a determiner (is this “the apple”, “that apple”, “an apple”, etc.). Prepositional phrases are any phrases which begin with a preposition, which includes most comments. I’m going to go through a variety of different sentence constructions and highlight the phrases in each.
Beginning with identity sentences using the preposition “ko”.
- [Ko Josh] [tōku ingoa] – This sentence is made up of two phrases. The prepositional phrase “Ko Josh” which indicates that “Josh” is the predicate. The predicate affirms that something is true about the subject. In this case, “Ko Josh” is asserting that whatever the subject of the sentence is, it’s the same thing as “Josh”. The second phrase in this sentence is the noun phrase “tōku ingoa” using the determiner “tōku” to specify which “ingoa” (name) we’re talking about. It’s specifically “my name” that we’re equating with “Josh”. We’re saying “Josh is my name”.
- [Ko wai] [tō ingoa?] – This sentence is similar to the previous one, but it’s a question. We replace the name in the prepositional phrase with the interrogative word “wai” because we expect the answer to be a name. We want to know which name is the equivalent of the subject phrase. The subject phrase is then “tō ingoa” using the determiner tō to say that the ingoa we want to know about is “yours”. We’re saying “What is your name?”
- [Nō te iwi Pākehā] [au] – This sentence is made up of two phrases. The prepositional phrase “Nō te iwi Pākeha” which indicates that the subject we’re about to introduce belongs to “te iwi Pākehā” or is part of the Pākehā people. The second phrase marks the subject “au” which is “me”. We’re saying “I belong to the Pākehā people” or “I am Pākehā”.
- [He tāone pai] [a Ōtautahi] – This sentence is made up of two phrases. The first is the noun phrase “He tāone pai” which uses the determiner “he” to mark “tāone pai” as the predicate of the sentence which we’re equating with the subject we then introduce. “Tāone” means “town” and we add the modifier “pai” (good) to it to specify what type of town we’re saying the subject is. The second phrase is “a Ōtautahi” so we’re saying that Christchurch is a good town.
- [He aha] [tērā?] – This sentence is similar to the previous one, but it’s a question. We replace the noun in the noun phrase with the interrogative word “aha” because we expect the answer to be a noun. We want to know what noun is equated with the subject of the sentence, the noun phrase “tērā” (that [over there]). We’re asking “what’s that?”
- [Kei te horoi] [au] [i ngā rīhi] – This sentence is made up of three phrases. “Kei te horoi” is a verbal phrase, using the verbal particle “kei te” to indicate that we’re talking about an action taking place in the present (this is an oversimplfication of “kei te” but I’m going to let it stand for now). The verb in this phrase is “horoi” which is the verb for “to wash” that we’re taking as our daily prompt. So this is a sentence starting that the subject is washing something. The subject is the noun phrase “au” (me/I) so the sentence is stating that I am washing something. The final phrase is a comment to specify the direct object of the verb as “ngā rīhi” (the dishes). It’s a prepositional phrase introduced by the preposition “i” which has a variety of functions, including introducing a comment which marks the object of a transitive verb such as “horoi”. We’re saying “I am washing the dishes.”