A comparison of morphosyntactic features between Marquesan ...

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. ‘ua he‘e te mau vehine PERF go DEF PC woman “the (small) group of women went” (id.) c. ‘ua he‘e te tau vehine PERF go DEF PL woman “the group of women went” (id.) MQA MQA Notably, Mutu & Teìkitutoua describe mou has having a specific dual number, but mau and tau lack specific number. Consequently, they cannot be used with postnominal numbers, thus *‘ua he‘e te mau vehine tokoto‘u (tokoto‘u = “three”). 3.2. HAWAIIAN Elbert & Pukui (1979:162) describe a few “special plurals” for HAW: mau, po‘e, kau, wahi, nāhi, and ona. Mau is certainly the most common, and functions as the plural marker in possessive phrases where determiners (ka~ke and nā) are disallowed as in example 7. (7) (*nā) ka‘u mau puke (DET.PL) my PL book “my books” (Elbert & Pukui 1986:241) HAW HAW kau is also apparently cognate with MQA tau, and serves as a plural particle, e.g. example 8. It is very rare and found mostly in the compounds kauhale “group of houses comprising a home”, kaukolu “group of three”, kauwahi “some, a little”. e meaning of each of these compounds is somewhat paucal, since kauhale indicates a limited number of buildings which comprise the traditional Hawaiian home, kaukolu is naturally limted to three, and kauwahi includes the more common paucal wahi (see below). (8) a. lawea mai i kau pā ipu a kākou bring.IMP hither DO PL dish gourd POSS 1INC.PL “bring our dishes here” (Elbert & Pukui 1986:303, pā ipu) b. ua ‘ike anei ‘oe i kau pua‘a a mākou PERF see YN 2SG.S DO PL pig POSS 1EXC.PL “have you seen our pigs” (id.:134, kau, sense 9) HAW HAW 6
Po‘e appears to be cognate with MQA po‘i and has a similar function as a collective plural marker for “group of people”, as in example 9. It is however occasionally used as an indiscriminate plural, e.g. po‘e hale “houses” (id., sense 2). (9) ‘e-walu ka po‘e kaua NUM-eight DEF group warrior “eight groups of warriors” (Elbert & Pukui 1986:334, po‘e) HAW HAW wahi is the typical paucal article, meaning “some, a little, a bit of ” (Elbert & Pukui 1986:376). Nāhi is a rare contraction of nā “plural article” and wahi “paucal article”, and it functions as a paucal as well. e last paucal is ona which precedes the last of two or more things in a list and usually precedes mau. (10) lawe mai i puke, i pepa, a me ona mau peni bring hither DO book DO paper and PC PL pencil “bring books, paper, and (some) pencils” (Elbert & Pukui 1979:163) HAW 3.3. TAHITIAN Lazard & Peltzer (2000) give several “prédéterminants” in TAH which align with those found in MQA and HAW: mau, tau, nau, ma‘a, hui, nana, pu‘e, feiā, hō‘ē, tahi, vetahi, reira, and a few combinations. According to them mau is an unlimited plural, equivalent to HAW mau. (11) a. ‘ua rave au i te mau puta PERF bring 1SG.S DO DET PL book “I brought the books” (Lazard & Peltzer 2000:166) TAH b. ‘ua lawe au i kau mau puke PERF bring 1SG.S DO your PL book “I brought your books” HAW ey claim that tau and nau are equivalent, and represent “un nombre restreint, ‘quelques, un certain nombre de’ ” (tr. “a restricted number, ‘some, a certain number of ’ ”). Furthermore, these cannot be used with the definite article te or possessives, but are compatible with demonstratives. It would seem then from this description that tau and nau are both paucals. 7
Page 1 and 2: A comparison of morphosyntactic fea
Page 3 and 4: No. HAW MQA TAH DEF SPEC SG kekahi
Page 5: SG DEF SPEC Init. Med. HAW he + −
Page 9 and 10: from native speakers, a task which

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