Some Thoughts on Demonstrative and Locative Nā

Date

2018

Contributor

Advisor

Department

Instructor

Depositor

Speaker

Researcher

Consultant

Interviewer

Narrator

Transcriber

Annotator

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Volume

2

Number/Issue

1

Starting Page

34

Ending Page

50

Alternative Title

Abstract

This article argues why two uses of nā (preposed demonstrative nā [= kēnā] and postposed deictic/locative nā) have disappeared from Hawaiian. Following a brief discussion of their historical use with a few examples, including the only attested examples of postposed locative nā in Hawaiian literature, the author proposes that the reason for their disappearance was the merging of the phonemes /ŋ/ (written as ng in Māori and g in Samoan) and /n/, so that *ngā and nā both came to be realized as nā. Because the preposed demonstrative nā frequently occupied the same syntactic space as the plural default determiner, both the demonstrative and the semantically related locative use of postposed nā fell out of use. 

Description

Keywords

Citation

Extent

17 pages

Format

Geographic Location

Time Period

Related To

Related To (URI)

Table of Contents

Rights

Rights Holder

Local Contexts

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.