The Polynesian articles

Abstract

The articles have generally a threefold use in Polynesian, viz. personal, deictic, and ligative. The forms of the personal and deictic articles may serve as morphological criteria for the classification of the Polynesian languages, which at present is based on exclusively phonetic indices. In function the articles are more complex than their names: “definite” and “indefinite” do not always have their European values, and the contrast of singular and plural is rather an antithesis of collective and numerative. All the Polynesian articles, except the vestigial ligative, help to differentiate noun from verb, to define personality and substance in the lexeme, sometimes with the added sense of plurality, emphasis, and size, but not of gender as in Indo-European and isolatedly in Indonesian. Their origin appears to be associated with demonstrative or selective usage like that of the allied Austronesian articles, to which they bear a close resemblance in function, if not in form. The articles, as part of the wider category of particles, constitute, with the pronouns, the active elements in the Polynesian (and the Austronesian) sentence.