David Kārena-Holmes is a published author living in Otepoti/Dunedin

COLUMN: In the written forms of both te reo Māori and English the end of a sentence is marked by a full stop, an exclamation mark or a question mark.

Thus, single-word commands, such as Haere! (“Go!”) and Whakarongo! (“Listen!”) are equally regarded as complete sentences in Māori and English.

It is when sentences become longer – composed of one or more phrases – that radical differences in sentence-construction between the languages become evident.

A phrase may be defined as a word or group of words which may stand as a complete sentence, or which may need to be linked to another phrase (signalled in these columns by a forward slash) for completion of a sentence.

With English, it’s customary to regard the presence of a main verb as essential in a complete sentence. The words haere (“to go”) and whakarongo (“to listen”) are, of course, verbs.

In te reo, however, sentences are often complete without a main verb.

Most, if not all, of such sentences without verbs are sentences which, for fluent translation into English require the introduction of a verb for which there simply isn’t any equivalent in te reo – verbs, that is, such as “am”, “are”, “is’, “have”, “had” and other parts of the English verb “to be” or “to have”.

In this context, looking at some simple examples which employ the “present location” prepositional particle – kei (“at, now”) provides a useful perspective on the simplicity of some constructions in te reo as well as the radical differences from English:

Kei te whare / ia. (“Now at the house / she.” = “She is at the house now.”) Kei a ia / te pukapuka. (“At him now / the book.” – “He has the book.”)

Here we are immediately confronted with multiple uses of a Māori particle. And it should also be noted that when a personal name or pronoun is to follow kei, the “personal article” – a – (a word with no equivalent in English should intervene.

As a preposition, kei is recognised as signifying “currently at” (location in the present tense). It is also widely used to form verb phrases with the word te:

Kei te haere / ia (“At the going / he.” = “He is going.”)

Kei te waiata / ia. (“At the singing / she.” = “She is singing.”)

When kei directly precedes a verb, however (that is, without an intervening te) it isn’t a preposition, but a verb particle which conveys a sense of warning or caution:

Kia tūpato / kei hinga koe. (“Be careful / lest fall you.” or “Take care to avoid falling.”)

Other multiple uses of various different particles remain to be discussed in further columns.