Cognitive Issues in Maori Anthropology

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COGNITIVE ISSUESINMAORI ANTHROPOLOGY

May 1990

The character and nature of action in Maoriculture are examined here, under the

hypothesis that the subject (in both cultural

and linguistic terms) does not express the same degree of power, self consciousnessand semantic relevance as it happens in

Western societies and languages, and thatthe whole cognitive structure of the event in

the Maori world has to be reconsidered

accordingly.In this aim, the functions and roles of such

traditional concepts as mana and tapu are

briefly taken into consideration, togetherwith some relevant - and still problematic -

features of the Maori language.

In a previous paper I have tried to show howsome linguistic mechanisms of the Maorilanguage are activated in a cultural contextin which the modes of action and the


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distinctive features of the agent assume a

discriminating role, and one that isstructured in a considerably different wayfrom the idea of it we hold in our culture(Fusi: 1985).The basic contention from which that paperhad started, was that there is a Maori idea of

agency, a specific cultural attitude towardsaction which is different from any other. Inmore general terms: the existence of a Maorimode of thought, in the sense of a possiblespecific representation of the world, distinctand qualitatively different from the one we

might term (extending Whorfs linguisticdefinition) Standard Average European(SAE).This same concept lies at the basis of the

present paper, in which some verbal formsof the Maori language are examined, in theattempt to relate their peculiarities to thedifferent modes in which action is lived and

practiced by the Maori.I am aware, obviously, that such a starting

point is at least questionable. The debateconcerning cultural relativism andprimitive mentality (to use an old term) is


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not just a problem of anthropology, but the

problempar excellence, the theoretical knotwhich lies at the very basis of the discipline.I have expressed elsewhere my persuasionthat this epistemological primitivenessmakes the adoption or the rebuttal ofrelativism rather a problem of philosophical

options (or tastes), and that no field datum,accurate and not ethnocentric as it may be,will ever be in a condition to supportconclusively any choice in one sense or theother.

Yet I think that the adoption of a criterion ofrelative cultural relativism is essential in theanthropological research of today (and infact generally - if unconsciously - practiced)at least as a methodological aid, if not as atheoretical precondition. It is in that formeracception that I will make use of itthroughout this paper.Accordingly, the data that I will discuss here(and the comments upon them) are not

presented as improbable evidences for anysettled hypothesis, but rather as a group ofsuggestions for a fresh approach to some old


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problems.

It must be clearly stressed - from thebeginning - that this is no linguistic work.Though linguistic facts are extensively dealtwith, the concern is exclusivelyanthropological. I am aware that specialists

may find my use of linguistic terms a littletoo free, and sometimes at odds with currentusage. This has been made necessary by the

peculiar aims of this paper, in which thediscussion of the features of the language is

just a starting point for a hypothesis which is

not about Maori language, but about Maoriindigenous psychology.

PART I

Ka patu a Hone i Tawhiri

John hit Tawhiri

This sentence, shown in both Maori andEnglish, illustrates what linguists call a

prototypical transitive situation. This isrealized through the concurrence of three


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elements: subject (S), transitive verb (V) and

(direct) object (O).In current linguistic terminology, S and Oare defined grammatical relations, in thatthey exert a specific and definite syntacticfunction within the sentence. Thesegrammatical relations are distinct from

semantic and pragmatic relations, though insome way they are closely related. Thismeans that while it is not difficult, in anylanguage, to single out, for example, S as agrammatical relation, it becomes much morecomplex to assign it a value in semantic and

pragmatic terms which show the samedegree of fixedness and coherence throughdifferent languages.Concerning the subject, in particular, there isa wide area of disagreement amonglinguists. The more stimulating, andcomparatively less controvertial definitionhas been proposed, in my opinion, byComrie (1981) in prototypical terms: thesubject is a prototype, a continuum alongwhich are placed, at different degrees of

power, features that can be related to the twodistinct qualities of topic and agent.


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Of these two qualities the first is related to

the pragmatic value of noun phrases. Assuch, from our point of view, which will beclear in the following, it doesnt raiserelevant theoretical problems. The trouble iswith the second: it implies a specificsemantic value, imposes the attribution of a

meaning.It is at this point that the interests ofanthropology and linguistics diverge. For thelinguist, the attribution of a meaning is,generally speaking, a proceeding which has

the aim to extract from an alien linguisticstructure a sense that may be recognized andexpressed in the terms and categories of thestructure of his own language (and its logic).On the contrary, the anthropologist takes forgranted a cross cultural variation of the

processes of attribution of the meaning, andis first of all interested in the study of themodes of this variation (and their reasons).Thus, it is not so easy for an anthropologistto subscribe the linguists definition of thesubject in terms of agency - not even in

prototypical terms - because the definition


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itself of agency may cover up a number of

quite different cultural and cognitiveattitudes, and consequently be of little use asa universal reference term.Quite reasonably, Bruce Biggs (1974),having to describe the Maori subject, reliesmostly on pragmatic parameters, defining it

as that part of the sentence which is beingspoken about and indispensable1.

The attribution of a semantic value to thesubject is a secondary and not autonomous

phase of the more general attribution of

meaning to the entire event of which thesentence offers the linguistic version. 1t isonly within this more general horizon thatthe features of the subject can be profitablystudied, and at the same time the need totake ones stand in it imposes a (partial)abandonment of the field of strictlylinguistic interests.This happens because the meaning of theevent in its fullest sense is a function of theontological statute of the action whichcharacterizes it and not, instead, the productof the joint movements of hypostatic


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components, linguistically isolated. The

language, giving us back the event,fragments its totality and synchrony inarticulated and diachronic segments: first,separating the arguments from the predicate,then ordering functionally the arguments.This universal operation is necessary to

make communication understandable. Onthe contrary the tendency of common sense,some methods of linguistics, and a lot ofanthropological enquiries seem often to takeit as a pattern through which individual andautonomous ontological entities operate,

real under any respect. In my opinion thisincrement of sense and explicative power ofthe model, with its alleged obviousness andnaturalness, introduces an arbitrary

philosophical option which has to be entirelydemonstrated, and causes some relevanttheoretical misunderstandings.This may not be particularly worrisomefrom the point of view of (SAE) commonsense, and neither for linguistics maybe -

but it is, on the contrary, of much interest forthe anthropologist who is concerned withcross cultural variations of sense.


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The core of it all lies in the value (and the

meaning) that are attributed to the action(the predicate). In more general terms, as wehave said, in its ontologicai statute. In ourculture, the action is something which

pertains totally to the subject. Independentlyfrom the control that this can exercise on it,

it is the existence of a subject which rendersan action possible. This last is just apredicate, an attribute. It has no autonomy ofits own and, although some of its featuresmay sometimes be defined also with regardto its effects (that is: its object), it is the

subject which organizes the nature and themore general meaning of it. More, the actionwhich the language gives us back is atypological and chrystallized abstraction.The predicate by which it is expressed is aquality of its arguments, an eminentlyrelational term, always identical to itself.The ontology of the action is entirelyresolved in the ontology of the agent.

Here we refer in particular to the actionwhich in SAE languages is expressedthrough a transitive verb.


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However, it is significant that all SAE verbs

(included impersonals) are functionally andsyntactically structured according to thetypical pattern of transitives.A number of ethnographic records, though,seem to contradict the alleged universality ofthis ontological scenery, offering us

suggestions that may have some indirectinterest for linguistics, too. In classicalstudies the problem has long since been

posed with stimulating analyses. It is a pitythey havent yet had an appropriate diffusionwithin anthropology: the image of pre-

classical greeks, outlined in the brilliantstudies of Vernant (1979, 1972) andHavelock (1978) - to quote two - invites to amethodological approach which could provevery useful in the study of primitivecultures.The intriguing evidence of the differentquality of these cultures, compared with thewestern one, cannot but plead for a thoroughrethinking of the statute of reality whichlies at their very bases.When the world is interpreted as the theatreand the place for the clash of forces, powers


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and energies external to man, which are

autonomous and incontrollable; when manacts in his environment in a reduced andlimited way; when he never feels thoroughlyresponsible and master of this acting: up towhat point can we imagine at the basis ofsuch a universe the same type of sense we

attribute to our actions? And then: up towhat point can we translate the subject -which we so easily identify in the structureof a primitive language - in terms of thealmighty subject which dominates oursentence?

Perhaps it is more reasonable to imaginesomething which is also qualitativelydifferent, to imagine this primitive worldas the place of different people from us, a

place in which the action unfolds itsontological autonomy, realizes itself interms of power and energy external to thehuman being, and - even more than that - ina condition to determine his forms ofexistence; a force that remains the samethrough a multitude of differentmanifestations. In this scenery the statutes ofthe subject and the agent result radically


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different with respect to our habitual point of

view.I dont mean, with this, that the role of theagent totally disappears. On the contrary, itis just in this depotentiate situation that allthose instances in which the agent unfolds agreater degree of control within the action

assume a peculiar relevance (also inlinguistic terms).On the other hand, the same idea of patient(the linguistic Direct Object) has to bereconsidered in different terms. Between thetwo actors, it is on the patient that the

dominance of sense is concentrated, becauseit is it which brings concrete evidence of theaction, in the changes this has brought aboutin its state, while the agent, now, is just amere functional support of the action. Thereis perhaps an ontology of this kind at the

basis of ergative languages2.In this paper I want to test how much thishypothesis can work in the study of culture,namely of the Maori culture.

PART II


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In a sense, and as far as patterning and

typological representations of culture canhold, Maori culture can be ascribed to thegroup of hunting-gathering societies. I havediscussed elsewhere the problems connectedwith such a crude assimilation, and thenecessity to put in the right light the original

features of it.Rich and original as it may be, however, itundoubtedly shows a lot of relevantcorrespondences with more canonicalexamples of hunting-gathering. Now, therelationship of the hunter-gatherer with

nature, environment, ecosystem has somespecific and peculiar traits, which, in spite ofregional variations, shows a consistentfixedness through cultures.Survival techniques which are chosen,adopted and culturally transmitted are notsimply empirical devices; they incorporate atthe same time a culturally marked idea ofthe position held in the world by the peoplewho uses them and, obviously, a culturallymarked idea of the world and of the humansubject. The man who fishes is not just thesum of an abstract human being and a hook


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(and eventually his prey), but a real cultural

microcosm, a system in which each of theelements at play has a specific statute just inconsequence of its being part of that play.The man who fishes is not the same man that

ploughs. In spite of their radical similarity,they organize experience in different ways,

have a different cognition of the self and adifferent cognition (perception) of the world.Hunter-gatherers only scratch the surface ofthe land they live on. The changes they takeinto the environment are, if any,imperceptible and always kept under the

threshold of balance of the ecosystem. Therhythms of their lives are automaticallyadapted to the times of the biological lifeflowing around them. Their intervention inthe world, their activity, their praxis, theircapacity to create are quantitativelyirrelevant, when compared with the infinite

production of acts and objects characterizingmost of the other cultural models. Thisdisproportion in quantity, though, is but theepiphenomenon of a difference in content,and the apparent commensurability of therespective products originates from an


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essential non commensurability of their

cultural logics.Only respecting this specificity, and itsimplicit richness, it is possible to talk aboutprimitive man in other terms from those ofa caricature, or an embryo, or a brutecounterpart of the Western (SAE) model.

Maori culture offers a good observationpoint for the verifiability of these generaltheoretical assumptions.

tapu and mana

There are two basic cultural concepts whichdirectly affect, limit and influence action inthe Maori world: tapu and mana. One canhardly imagine one single feature of Maoriculture which is not expressed in relationwith (or in terms of) those concepts. Again, Iwill not be concerned here with a detailedexploration of the theoretical issues of thissubject, task in which better men than mehave failed. I wont even attempt anyexaustive functional definition of the twoconcepts. For my aims, I will be contentwith the less ambitious task of defining tapu


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and mana in terms of their practical

consequences and concrete effects on Maorilife and experience. Accordingly, I will propose these (I hope not controversial)definitions:

a) tapu is something which conditions and

affects the ways and modes in which mancomes in touch with the world around him;that is, something which alters his ordinary(natural) behavior in the relationship withobjects, living beings, acts and eventsexternal to him, and is generally resolved in

a ritualized behavior, and in an interruptionor deviation (and anyway a de-potentiation)of human action.

b) mana manifests in an alteration of thecultural features of objects, living beings,acts and events and bestows on them anexceptional sacral aura. It is an increase instatic power, but, more, a principle whichunifies culturally the most heterogeneousitems.c) mana and tapu, in spite of their radicaldistinctness, are strictly complementaryterms, and one is not given without the


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other.

Yet, tapu occupies a somewhat subordinateposition in respect to mana. In fact, whilethe latter is definitely an intrinsic and, in asense, measurable quality (either original oracquired) of things, tapu is an extrinsic and

relational feature originated by thepervasiveness ofmana in the world, a meresignal of avoidance which acquires qualityonly in relation to the mana to which itrefers. In this sense it is to be understood theapparent paradox of the ambivalence oftapu

as a marker both of impurity and sacredness.At a closer inspection, it appears that what isactually marked is rather the dividing line

between sacred and impure. Tapu acts as arelational term, which expresses the essenceof this ontological fracture, and not aspecific quality of one or the other of thefields that are being separated3. As such, itcan be attached to all sorts of things andevents.The important thing is that it does not seemactually relevant what is in danger in respectof what but rather the fact that mana is


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exposed in some way, independently from

the direction of the danger: another sign of areduced centrality of the subject in the event.

action and balance

Mana and tapu, we have said, show up

without exceptions in each and everyrelationship of which man is a part.Moreover, they constitute, for the Maori, anexplicative model of reality as a whole, evenin those aspects of it in which man is notdirectly involved (natural events, animal life,

inanimate beings and objects, etc.).It is worth stressing, obvious as it may seem,that both are only secondarily (and as a

byproduct) culturally prescriptive concepts,ritually organized. Before that - and a wholetradition of case studies and ethnographicreports offers good evidence of it - they areintegral part of Maori cultural commonsense, of the cultural organization of reality,of the perception itself of reality. If weattributed to the Maori the same idea ofagency and activity we find in thecontemporary European, we would say that


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human action and its free unfolding are

subjected in this way to a series of ties andlimitations which condition quantitatively itsstrenght and direction.A less ethnocentric point of view, though,could suggest, on the contrary, a differentquality of agency in which what we tend to

consider (and perceive) as ties andlimitations are but the riverbed withinwhich - only activity and agency can beconceived.

The cultural image one can draw out of all

this, more than any weakening of the generalidea of action, represents rather a morediffuse expansion of it out of the humansubject, to the point of becoming a sort of

pervasive energy whose complexive balanceis far more relevant than occasional regionalactivations. This seems to me to be the

point: it is not man as a subject, as a singleindividuality, who produces and deliversenergy and activity, who creates them fromnothing and dispenses them in thesurrounding world with determinant effects.On the contrary, the individual administrates


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a determinate quantum of the total natural

energy, of which he partakes on a par withall the other beings (animate or not) of thesystem. The limits of this quantum aredetermined by the threshold of balance ofthe energy itself, and are always againdemarcated by a number oftapu signals.

This concept of balance is a fundamentalone, because to every action, in the Maoriworld, corresponds a definite andmeasurable reaction, that has to be keptunder control by ritual means4.

Action is thus conceived only in relationand subordinately to this balance. Outsidethese conditions it cannot be butdisturbance and sacrilege. Accordingly, therole of the subject is strongly reduced andso is his capacity (both as an individual andas a biological species) to generate changes,to act upon the world and to modify it forhis own purposes.

subject and subjects


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Correct as it may be, though, this two actors

polarization (subject-world, ego-world) hasthe drawback to segregate one from theother, each in an ontological autonomy of itsown, which may not correspond to what theMaori actually felt about the matter. More, itdoes not account for the determinant role,

in respect of both, of social and kinshiporganization. Here the idea of the unicity ofthe role of subject is of no great help, and

perhaps it is better to hypothesize aredistribution (even if not necessarily equal)of some of the features of the subject among

three different entities: the individual, theenvironment (ecosystem, world) and society(with its specific levels: iwi, hapu, whanau,chief, etc.).The nature and functions of personality inMaori culture are intriguingly intertwinedwith tribal logic and needs, and conformityand self assessment alternatively markindividual behavior according to complexmana-governed patterns. It is true, on oneside, that tribal interest and logic pervadeindividual experience. Prytz Johansen(1954) effectively documents how strongly


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the identity of the Maori is conditioned by

kinship and tribal patterns sometimes up tothe limits of total identification with thetribe, such as that even at the level of thelanguage, ego and the group becomeinterchangeable, and the ethnographer canhardly tell one from the other in native

reports. On the other side it is well knownthat the sense of personal sacredness hasalways been one of the strongest forces inMaori culture. Self assessment andindividual enterprise are the sources of manyof the most lively and appreciated Maori

narrations, and of a lot of significanthistorical anecdotes. But they never trespass(ifnot at the cost of terrible personal - andcosmic - consequences) the borders carefullyset by mana around mans movements in theworld.

Transgression cannot be accepted under anycircumstance. To take place, it has to

become other from itself, it has to betransformed and balanced, with appropriateritual interventions and appropriate removalsof tapu. But this cannot be made at will by


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anybody in any situation, and is in the end

an exceptional performance, made byexceptional men in exceptional occasions;and even in these cases a positive outcome isnever given for granted. Maori oral traditionoffers a wealth of such examples, to beginwith the fundamental Maui myth.

The virulence of interspecific conflicts andthe extraordinary sensitiveness of the Maoriin matters of personal sacredness, haveinduced some psychlogists5 to hypothesize astrong sense of individuality in Maori

personality. This interpretation holds as far

as human and social relations only areconcerned. Individual mana is the onlymeans of cultural survival, the only evidenceand defence of the identity of man in a worldordered in a delicate balance of energyfields. Accordingly, the sensitivity of theMaori in such matters appears quiteunderstandable, together with his vitalinterest in the distribution of power internalto the fixed quantum of human mana. But itis easy to realize, at the same time, how theconcern for personal mana, its defence andenlargement, is never related to an actual


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interest to act upon the world, and to

generate decisive changes in theenvironment.In the end, the capital importance of

personal sacredness in the Maori mind doesnot contradict the contention that a reduced

perception of identity is a general feature of

Maori ego. Together with a lot ofethnographic evidences, many indirectsources come to strenghten this hypothesis.Hohepa (1977) has effectively stressed howin Maori narrative texts it is often quiteimpossible to distinguish between the

speaker and the person spoken about, thetime and circumstances of the narration andthose of the narrated events (something thatcould intrigue our intensional logicians).Even in the language, particles referring tospace and time relations, deictic particles,directional and context markers, are veryoften quite difficult to translate into thelinear sequences and patterns we are used to.In particular, movement is not exclusivelyexpressed in terms of fixed and objectivecoordinates of space and time, but hasalways a definite emotional content, which


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often causes an intriguing shift of the

observation point, and a consequentredefinition of roles in the discourse, inwhich the centrality of the speaker is nevertaken for granted.Obviously enough, these are not evidences,and alternative interpretations can be

attempted. Nevertheless, they add one moreargument to our hypothesis, and enlarge aproblematic landscape that cannot be simplypassed over.I have already indicated the origins of thisreduced perception of identity in the

ontological dominance of mana on thecultural scene. As I have said elsewhere:

mana is in fact a force that characterizes andcharges with meaning any relationship in which

man is present. A force that not only shapes hisactions, but the perception itself he has of his

actions, of his position in the event, of thereduced transitivity of his acts, of the limited

dynamism of his role as a subject (Fusi 1985).

In short, it seems likely that a radicalepistemological separation between the self

and the world is extraneous to the Maori


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mode of thought. This does not mean that

some sort of separation wont operate at anylevel. Only, it seems in one sense looser, andin another qualitatively different from theone we ourselves experience, as if it workedaccording to psychological mechanisms andoperations of its own.

This has to be stressed, because I am notarguing here against the existence of the ideaof agency in the Maori world, which, on thecontrary, can easily be detected. It is thequality and distribution of it which is beingdiscussed, its exceptional character, and the

background of different semantic relationsentailed in this exceptionality. Again, I wontsupport these contentions with anyethnographic evidence, although a great dealof anthropologic literature might be quotedfor this purpose: I only wanted to premise auseful methodological introduction to thematerial discussed in the following section.

It is my belief, here, that Maori language bears some clear marks of the specificrelevance that is attributed in the culture toagentive situations, and that the distinction


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between agentive and non agentive contexts

is an organizing principle behind thecomplex and varied surface features of thelanguage.

PART III

The ontological autonomy of the action, peculiar and central feature of Maoricognitive universe, is reflected in theorganization and structure of the language.If the action dominates the semantic field,the verb dominates and organizes the

sentence. Installed at the beginning of thesentence, the verb orders its components: theverb is the key word in the real sense of theterm. Biggs (1969) groups maori verbs intothe two classes of Universals and Statives,and bases this distinction on the possibilityof the former to be passivized, while

passivization is excluded for the statives.This formal partition is generally acceptedwithout dispute. These two forms representdifferent events, or modes of manifestation, of the same generai idea ofaction.


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statives

Statives express a state, a condition, aquality, of an event, but never a real, actualaction. They are said to have anapproximate passive meaning, but only

because there is no other way to describethem in our terms. A stative cannot bepresent together with an agent in the samesentence.In those not very frequent (but none the lessvery significant) cases in which the Maori

has to point to the entity or the circumstancewhich determined the condition expressedby the stative, these are recorded as source,origin and the like, but never with thefeatures of a real agent. This is easilydetected by the analysis of the prepositionsystem, as we shall see.Such distinction is present, obviously, alsoin SAE languages, but it is never so clearlyexpressed, and the roles of agent and origintend (at least from a semantic point of view)to merge and overlap; and they are rarelymorphologically distinguished as it happens


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with Maori. Moreover, it is given the case of

Maori statives which not only show apassive content, but cannot be translated, ina SAE language, other than with an actual

passive, together with an actual agent.

This peculiarity is better understood if it is

seen as a way to represent an action which is perceived quite differently from ourstandards. SAE languages show a tendencyto extract the idea of the action from theevent, and treat it as an abstract andtypological concept. The Maori, on the

contrary, seems to represent to himself thissame action in its entirety, and in its totaltime span, something like a concrete object6.This impression of concreteness isstrenghtened by the nominal origin of theverb: only the use of verbal particles makesa verb out of a base. This characteristic givesthe sensation (that may be not so impressivefor linguists as it is for anthropologists) ofan ontological contiguity between the verband the complements, and that the context ofthe sentence be determined by theinteraction of the three elements (V, S, O),


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and not by a definite relationship between

two of them (S and O) typologized andcrystallized in the third (V).Then, if the event is conceived of as asemantic totality which merges in a solecontinuum verb and complements, this ischaracterized above all by synchrony.

However in some cases the representation ofthe event has to record an objectivelydiachronic situation. As with the statives,which sometimes describe a state which has

been previously caused by somebody orsomething. This diachrony has to be

recorded by mentioning the agent. But this isnot done so simply in Maori: first becausean agent does not partake in a Maorisentence if the action for which it isresponsible is not recorded (and a stativedoes not record the action, but its results);and second because, as we shall see, the

presence of an agent, for the exceptional rolethis plays in Maori cognitive universe,would unbalance the diachrony towards itsown side, thus modifying the meaning of thesentence.This happens because the time, the whole


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concept and sense of the time, for the Maori,

is in some way related to the quality of theaction, has a definite emotional content, andis not a separate, objective, unchanging

pattern of human experience. The agent,then, is not mentioned as such in a stativesentence, but it appears as the source, the

origin of the event - as we have said - andfor that reason takes a specific marker7.

passive

Transitive verbs, on the contrary, imply an

idea of the action considered as production,causation and dynamism. It will not besurprising, then, that their use is morelimited and less frequent than the so calledpassive form. The nature (and the veryexistence) of the passive in Maori has beenextensively discussed within polynesianlinguistics. The provisional conclusion isthat the maori passive is an actual passive, inthe sense we ourselves understand it, even ifthere is a tendency to admit that relatedconstructions in other polynesian languages(namely Samoan) may have a different


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(perfective) function (Milner 1962).

Of course passive is simply the name for alinguistic form, and it is true that formallyand syntactically SAE and maori passivesare equivalent. Yet, the evidence of thisformal equivalence risks to suggest

unperceived and arbitrary analogies in thefield of cultural semantics, which end upforcing in a stereotyped cognitive patterncultural aspects of a much greatercomplexity.On the contrary, the idea of passive (as well

as the idea of active), in that it implies theconcentration of the semantic polarity of thesentence upon the actors (and theirhierarchy) and not upon the event, does notseem to be able to answer all the questions.The formal correspondence between the two

passives should not mislead: in fact, theydiffer considerably in their use, which inSAE languages is topic and stylistic, and inMori definitely not, as it is inductivelyshown also by the higher frequence of thisform compared to the active, which isclearly not a mere quantitative datum8.


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My impression, in this case, is that we are

not dealing with a passive, but rather with a particular kind of stative. It is particular because usually a stative indicates anintrinsic quality that has not been acquiredas a consequence of an external action or,when an action actually took place, it has

already disappeared from the semanticscenery of the sentence. On the contrary, Ithink that the Maori passive has thefunction of pointing at the same time to theresult of the action (that is, the statedetermined by it) and to its causative nature.

It is not a middle form between active andstative, but rather a form whichcomprehends both, representing the action inits entirety and totality (of which also theresults are a part). Its content is at the sametime teleological and analytical, and boththese features define the semantic borders ofthe verb with equal rights. In thisinterpretation, the passivizing suffix is

better described as a stativizingsuffix.However this suffix does not merely modifythe verb: it creates in fact two distinct verbs,in a double headed sentence with two


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autonomous subjects9. This is not, it should

be stressed again, a linguistic hypothesis.This whole reasoning is just an attempt todescribe and interpret some facts of thelanguage under a cognitive point of view. Itdoesnt question traditional and nontraditional grammars of Maori and has no

pretence whatsoever to look for newlinguistic approaches to Maori.

prepositions

The semantic polarization of the action has

other relevant consequences. First of all, thefact that the relationships between the actors,and the individual role of each of them, arecoded mostly in the semantics of the verb.This may explain the polisemy and theseemingly contradictory use of prepositions.Here is another problem with statives. As wehave seen, in a Maori sentence, a stativenever occurs with an agent. The secondcomplement, in fact, which grammariansdefine as the source, is marked with the

preposition i, and not with e, which is thecharacteristic preposition of the transitive


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agent in Maori. This is quite baffling,

because i is also the preposition whichcharacterizes Direct Objects of transitiveverbs, and it assumes consequently acontradictory polisemy: on one side it is themarker which indicates the quality of

patient, on the other, it is a marker in some

way connected with the opposite idea ofagency, also if not definitely an agentmarker. This formal ambiguity is quitesurprising, as is clearly shown in theclassical example:

Ka inu au i te rongoa /I drank the medicinevs.

Ka ora au i te rongoa /I was healed by themedicineSome grammarians hypotesize that the

preposition i of the stative sentence ismerely homophonous, but grammaticallyother from the i of the transitive. Howeverthis sounds quite like an ad hoc theory, andit has no real credit. Other grammarianslimit themselves to record the paradox,


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without trying to explain it (and without

considering it too relevant). In both casesthey stress the fact that the i markedcomplement is not properly an agent (as wehave said before) but rather a source, anorigin, and the like.They are right. This distinction is clear and

unambiguous. The sensibility to thisdifference appears quite understandable,because it concerns directly the quality, themeasure and the time with which the actionmanifests itself. On such matters ambiguityis not allowed. The need, on the contrary, to

avoid this sort of ambiguity, andconsequently to clearly differentiate thesource of the stative from the transitiveagent, generates what we perceive as a muchmore substantial ambiguity, one that theMaori doesnt seem to consider as such.

In my opinion this is not perceived as anambiguity by the Maori for the definitereason that a culture in which the event is

privileged with respect to the actors, can becontent with an approximate formaldetermination of the roles of the latter,


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because the meaning of the sentence is

essentially resolved in the semantics of theverb, in itself sufficient to avoid ambiguity. Ithink that the marker i has not a specificmeaning, but rather a definite function: todistinguish the second complement from thesubject (that is - in Biggs definition - the

one which is indispensable or spoken about)in those cases in which this secondcomplement is not connected with agentivecontexts. It marks, generically, thedifference between the complements,

pointing to non subjects, but not -

specifically - to their semantic values.We have referred to Biggs definition of theMori subject because it makes noassumption about its semantic power. As amatter of fact, I think that the linguisticsubject, though present in Maori, is ratherloosely defined. as a subject marker, farexample, does not hold in every context. InActor Emphatic constructions, as we shallsee, marks the DO, and the same happenswith the weak imperative. And, if ourhypothesis is right, e in stativized sentencescan be considered as some sort of subject


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marker. A further, possible clue of this can

be drawn from the position of the unmarkedcomplement near the verb: while this is astrict rule with transitive active verbs andstatives (to the point of being considered oneof the conditions for subjectness) it does notalways hold with stativized verbs, where the

unmarked complement can exchangeposition with the one marked with e.But even the formal identity of the stative,transitive and intransitive subjects shouldnot suggest further similarities in the field ofsemantics. Far example, the fact that the

complement of an intransitive is not markeddoes not imply - in my opinion - any realkinship with the transitive subject (apartfrom being, in both cases, that which is

being spoken about); on the contrary, I ammore inclined to relate it to the secondcomplement of the active transitive. It is notmarked merely because there is no need farit, since there is only one complement.Maori intransitive may be considered as aform in between a stative and a transitive:with the former it shares the features of anindicator of state, condition, character (even


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when it implies an actual movement) and

has, at the same time, the intrinsic dynamismof the latter (and can therefore be stativized).

imperative

But the more radical distinction in Maori

between these three instances (stative,transitive and intransitive) is shown in theirrespective behaviors in imperative contexts:statives - obviously - have no imperativeform, while intransitives have a verystraightforward one. Transitives, on the

other hand, admit an imperative form onlyafter they have taken the passive suffix.Maori grammarians keep on askingthemselves why transitive verbs should beused passively in the imperative. But if weconsider the Maori passive as a stativeincorporating a causation, it is no surprisethat an imperative should imply not only theconcept of obligatory execution - and thenalso an agentive stress - but the idea of thescope of the action as well, that is, of thestate that must result from the execution10.In intransitive imperatives - on the contrary -


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the value of the ordered action, its scope,

lies in the action itself. There is no resultingstate. This is the reason why, althoughintransitives may all be stativized inspecific semantic contexts, intransitiveimperatives are not to be found in astativized form.

weak imperative

There are two more constructions which particularly intrigue grammarians, for thereason that they cannot fit into conventional

grammatical patterns, and have to beexplained with ad hoc hypotheses: the socalled weak imperative and the ActorEmphatic construction.

Let us take the former, as it is expressed bythe example:

Me inu e koe te rongoa

You should drink the medicine

What is mostly surprising, here, is the lackof the passive suffix, whose presence alone


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could justify the unmakedness ofte rongoa.

If we accept the point of view that unmarkednoun phrases are always subject, this seemsutterly absurd, because in this context terongoa is clearly a direct object. Usuallygrammarians ask themselves why a directobject marker cannot be found here, and,

unless they want to accept an ergative inter pretatiorl for this, they cannot find anyanswer.But here they seem to miss a different point.As a matter of fact, it is not the absence of adirect object marker that has to be explained,

but the non use, in this context, of thepassive suffix with inu. And as long as the passive suffix is considered a passivizingdevice, this will remain a mystery. On this

point the stativizing hypothesis may be ofsome help.

The me imperative is not a proper command;it is a way of expressing advice andsuggestions. This means that theeffectiveness of the advice, its practicalresult, cannot be taken for granted.But state, to the concrete Maori mind, is


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never a hypothetical condition: either it is, or

it is not. That is why a stative suffix cannotbe used here, and the stress is put on thetransitive aspect of the verb.

For the fact that te rongoa is unmarked, wecan advance two possible and not

incompatible hypotheses:1) the Maori, even if the suffix cannot beused, wants to preserve the imperativestructure of the sentence, or

2) more simply, the presence of thepreposition e is enough to define clearly theroles of both actors, and renders useless thefunctional markeri, which, moreover, wouldcreate an ungrammatical sentence, with bothcomplements marked:

* Me inu e koe i te rongoa

On the other hand a solution of the kind

* Me inu koe i te rongoa


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is clearly rejected by the Maori, in that it

fails to account for the definitely agentiveand teleonomical context implied by the useof the hortative. From this point of view, thisconstruction may be atypical, but neverreally irregular. Its peculiar features can beexplained by the difficulties of hypothetical

representations for a mentality, and alanguage, which tend to identify therepresentation with the event, and to bestowon the event a definite character ofconcreteness.

Actor Emphatic

A similar reasoning applies in the case ofActor Emphatic eonstructions. Let us take,here, the common example

Na te tama i inu te rongoa

It was the boy that drank the medicine

Here, too, the traditional interpretation of theMaori passive is of no use. If it were a real

passive, it is here more than in any othercontext that it should be used:


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* Na te tama i inumia te rongoa

On the contrary, if we accept the stativehypothesis, it is possible to understand whythere is no place for the suffix, here.

Actor Emphatic is a very peculiarconstruction in Maori: it is the only one inwhich there is a definite stress on thedominant and agentive character of acomplement. In Actor Emphatic, thecharacteristic hierarchy of the maori

sentence is definitely subverted by the needto isolate the agent in a position ofdominance, not only over the othercomplement, but over the verb itself.Such prominence of the agent is anexceptional event and has to beexceptionally marked: it is the only case inMaori (with the exception of the ko-phrases)in which the actor precedes the verb in wordorder, and is marked by a peculiar

preposition.

It is obvious why no stativizing prefix is


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used here: its presence unavoidably would

strenghten the semantic power of the object,with the consequence of weakening theagentive stress, achieved through theassociation of a marked actor with atransitive verb.As in the case of the weak imperative, here,

too, te rongoa is not marked, because thestrong marker of the agent is enough tocaracterize the roles of both complements,without resorting to an ungrammatical

* Na te tama i inu i te rongoa

with both complements marked.

The only other instance, in Maori, of thefronting of a complement to the verb isshown in the ko-fronting construction. But itis generally accepted that this does not pointto any specific feature of agency, but ratherto the pragmatic relevance of the ko-markedcomplement. This is the meaning of thedefinition ofko as focus particle.As for the polarity, in the Actor Emphatic,of the two morphs m- and n-, its temporal


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meaning is evident, together with their

association with the tense markers e and i.On the other hand their contiguity with thepossessive constructions cannot be missed.

This seems to point to a group of definiteand distinct semantic features, activated in a

context of strong agency, with a separateand exceptional position within the structureof the Maori language.It is important to note that intransitivescannot be used in Actor Emphaticconstructions. This apparently strange

behavior may find a possible explanation inthe light of the contention that theintransitive complement may have thefeatures of a patient, and not of a real agent.Intransitive Actor Emphatic sentences aresometimes to be found in modern spokenMaori, but not all native speakers acceptthem.

transitivized

For obvious semantic reasons, experienceverbs and statives (as well as stativized)


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cannot be found in Actor Emphatic

constructions. For this to happen, stativeshave to be de-stativized, with the use of theprefix whaka.

This fact should be described with moreaccuracy than it is possible here. Most of all,

we want to stress the fact that, once again,the Maori has a need to make use of aspecific construction to cope with a

particular aspect of the concept of action,and that the starting point, once more, is thestate, the patient.

Causation is the highest level of selfconsciousness, power and teleonomy of thesubject. It is not surprising then, that Maoridoes not always dispose of autonomousverbs to express it in each of its forms, butmust resort to a causative suffix. In otherwords, agency cannot be merely recorded inthe semantics of the verb: to beconceptualized and expressed, it needs to beunequivocally marked in the morphology.But it is evident what this means incognitive terms: expressed and stressed thisway, causation has the features of an


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abstract and typological principle.

The morphological increment mimes theincrement in subjective power, a plus-value,that now belongs totally to the subject, whilethe event stays the same.

Let us consider a banal example

mate = to be dead vs. whakamate = to kill

In this case, Maori does not make use of averb which records in itself the idea of anaction, but a base which describes

objectively the event, and only the use of theprefix will focus the specific circumstancesof it and its semantic relationships with theactors.

nominalization

Nominalization is another important featureof the Maori language, and one very tellingabout maori mentality and the psychologicalcontext of action in the culture.Its concretive character has been wellinvestigated by Johansen (1948) and I will


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not dwell on it here, though I dont find

Johansens conclusions totally convincing. Iwill refer the reader to his text to check the points of contact with the hypothesisillustrated in this paper.

Notes

1. But, on the other hand, we may note thatit is not rare, in old Maori narrative texts, tofind sentences (presumably correctly

transcribed ) without a recognizable subject,which can only be guessed from the context(but under whose logic?). And it seems alittle too simple just to say that those textsbristle with incomplete predications(Hohepa 1969, Biggs 1974): even if modernnative speakers find them incomplete, thismight not have been the case with the oldmaori informants that were responsible forthe texts.

2. cfr. Plank 1979.


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3. cfr. Douglas 1970.

4. And balance is probably the mostproper translation we could attempt forutu,another central concept in Maoriweltanschauung closely related to thesemantic field of mana, and generally

translated with a misleading vengeance,price, compensation, etc.

5. cfr. Harr 1981.

6. cfr. Johansen 1948.

7. I will not question here this oppositionagent vs. source, though the couplesyncronic agent vs. diacronic agent would

perhaps better express the semantic kinshipof the two.

8. But cfr. Chung 1977 for an oppositepoint of view.

9. It is interesting to note that the rigidword order which characterizes maorisentences is in this case a little looser,


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allowing a switching in the order of the two

complements (Biggs 1969:32). This - too -might point to a semantic equipotency of thetwo.

10. The absence of the e markedcomplement in imperative sentences canbe

easily explained. As it happens in mostlanguages, the strictly connoteddirectionality of the imperative makes anexplicit quotation of the subject superfluous,as its presence is implied in the

psychological context of the utterance.

References

BIGGS, B.1969 Lets Learn Maori. Wellington, Reed.1974 Some Problerns of PolynesianGrammar, J.P.S., 83:401-426.

CHUNG, S.1977 Maori as an Accusative Language,J.P.S., 86:355370.

COMRIE, B.


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1981 Language Universals and Linguistic

Typology, Syntax and Morphology, Oxford,Basil Blackwell.

DOUGLAS, M.1970 Purity and Danger An Analysis ofConcepts of Pollution and Taboo,

Harmondsworth, Penguin Books.FUSI, V.1985 Action and Possession in Maori

Language and Culture A Whorfian

Approach, LHomme 94:117-145.

HARR, R.1981 Psychological Variety, in P. Heelasand H. Lock, eds., Indigenous Psychologies.

New York, Academic Press.

HAVELOCK, E.A.1978 The Greek Concept of Justice from itsShadow in Homer to its Substance in Plato.Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard UniversityPress.

HOHEPA, P.W.


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1969 Embedding, Deletion and Gapping in

Maori Narrative Texts. Working Papers inLinguistics n.2, Honolulu, University ofHawaii.1977 A Look at Maori NarrativeStructure, Journal of the PolynesianSociety, 86:355-370.

JOHANSEN, J.P.1948 Character and Structure of the Actionin Maori, Kbenhavn, I Kommission HosEjnar Munksgaard.1954 The Maori and his Religion in its Non-

Ritualistic Aspects, Kbenhavn, IKommission Hos Ejnar Munksgaard.

MILNER, G.B.1962 Active, Passive and Perfective inSamoan A Fresh Appraisal of the

Problem, Journal of the PolynesianSociety, 71:151-161.

PLANK, F. (ED.)1979 Introduction to Ergativity - Toward aTheory of Grammatical Relations, London,Academic Press.


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VERNANT, J.P.1979 Religions, histoire, raisons, Paris,Maspero.

VERNANT, J.P. AND VIDAL NAQUET, P.1972 Mythe et tragdie en Grce ancienne,

Paris, Maspero.

Documents

Cognitive Issues in Maori Anthropology