Review

A review of building action verb sentences in the active voice.

Word order

Tense

marker

+

Verb

+

Agent

+

'i' or

'ki'

+

Object

Tense Markers

Place a tens marker before the verb.

Marker

Tense

The action, experience or state:

I

Simple past

happened in the past

I te

Past continuous

was happening

Kua

Past perfect

'has' been completed (often recently)

E...ana

Present continuous

is happening

Kei te

Present

is happening

Ka

Further

will happen

The verb

This pattern works for Action verbs and Experience verbs. Stative verbs use a different pattern

The verb always stays the same, no matter the tense

Verbs do add a ‘tail’ when used in the passive voice, but we havn't looked at this yet.

Agent and object nouns

Common nouns

Place a determiner before the agent and object nouns.

Before AGENT
Comparable to
Before OBJECT
te
'the' (singular)
te
ngā
'the' (plural)
ngā
he
'a'
tētahi
he
'some'
ētahi

Most common nouns stay the same, no matter if they are singular or plural

There are many more determiners

Personal nouns

Place the ‘personal’ article before a personal noun.

Before AGENT
Comparable to
Before OBJECT
a
nothing like it in English
a

Pronouns

If the pronoun is the agent, nothing is needed. But if the pronoun is the object, place the ‘personal’ article before the pronoun

Before AGENT
Comparable to
Before OBJECT
nothing
nothing like it in English

a

(except 'ahau')

'i' or 'ki' before the object

Depends on the verb and on the context of the sentence

There must be one or the other, even if it performs no other function than to simply mark that the object comes next in the sentence

Learn the common 'experience' verbs, most of them use ‘ki’. There are only a couple of exceptions

Use 'ki'

To indicate motion toward the object, or attention / focus towards the object

To indicates that the action is done ‘with’ or ‘using’ the object

To mark the objects of most experience verbs

Very generally, to mark the indirect object of an intransitive verb

To mark the indirect object of a transitive verb

Use 'i'

To mark the direct object of many transitive verbs. In other words, to mark the object when it simply gets 'verbed'.

To indicate motion away from the object

To mark the objects of a small subset of ‘experience’ verbs