Analysing A/O Possession in Māori-Language Tweets
Abstract
:1. Introduction
Scope
2. A/O Alternation in Māori
- alienability vs. inalienability (Krupa 1964, p. 434; 2003, p. 122)
- active vs. passive (Foster 1987)
- dominance vs. subordination (Biggs 1996, p. 42), later revised to dominance vs. non-dominance (Bauer et al. 1997, p. 391; Biggs 2000, as cited in Harlow 2007, p. 168)
- inheritance vs. active production (Ryan 1974, p. 5)
(1) | ngā | tamariki | a | te | matua |
the.PL | children | POSS | the.SG | parent | |
‘The children of the parent/the parent’s children’ |
(2) | te | matua | o | ngā | tamariki |
the.SG | parent | POSS | the.PL | children | |
‘The parent of the children/the children’s parent’ |
(3) | te | tuhinga | a | Rāwiri | i | tana | reta |
the.SG | writing | POSS | David | OBJ | his | letter | |
‘David’s writing of his letter’ |
- Whakarākei/Adornments
- Whanaunga/Relations (of same generation or older)
- Waka/Modes of transport
- Wāhanga/Parts of someone/thing
- Whakaruruhau/Shelter7
- Whakaora/Wellbeing
- Wāhi/Places
- Whakaahua/Adjectives or qualities of someone/thing
“As a second-language speaker of te reo Māori, I was introduced to the A and O categories early as another example of how reo (language) and tikanga (customs) are intertwined. To have confidence knowing which is the correct marker to use, one has to have a good understanding of the relationships being discussed and where the mana (authority) of the relationship resides. In general, the more authoritative actor has the O category, with the more submissive character being referred to in the A category. But there are lots of nuances, with objects taking the O category in some instances, but then the same object taking the A category in other instances, depending on the different relationships that are in play. I was fortunate that when I learnt te reo Māori I was in the presence of some gifted exponents of Māori language. Once my ear became tuned, I found that I was able to defer to what sounded the best, rather than turning to specific rules about which category should be used. For me, this makes learning and speaking te reo Māori natural and more enjoyable as I am not relying on following rules, but rather I am being guided by a taonga (treasure) that has been handed down to me. Unfortunately, this does not mean I am correct all the time, but it works well enough for me to run with it!”
Research Questions
- RQ1: What semantic categories and relationships are most frequently used by Māori-language tweeters in the [possessum a/o possessor] construction?
- RQ2: To what extent do Māori-language tweeters adhere to the rules described in Māori grammars when using the [possessum a/o possessor] construction? By analysing semantic categories and relationships, can patterns of adherence to and/or deviation from these rules be identified?
- RQ3: What are the sociolinguistic profiles of the tweeters in the corpus? If notable patterns arise from RQ2, can these be linked to characteristics such as gender, number of followers, and overall proportion of Māori-language tweets?
3. Data and Methods
- Non-possessive uses of a and o, including occurrences of the English indefinite article, incorrect word division (e.g., a’s that had become detached from kia), and remaining instances of the personal article;
- Tweets in which (short) a or o were used instead of (long) ā or ō, respectively;
- Formulaic phrases9 in which users did not explicitly choose a possessive marker (e.g., Te Wiki o te Reo Māori ‘Māori Language Week’);
- Tweets where the use of a or o was unclear.
4. Semantic Classification Scheme
4.1. PSSM and PSSR Variables
4.2. RELA Variable
4.3. Semantic Annotation Challenges
(4) | te | pukapuka | a | Hēmi Kelly | rāua | ko | Witi Ihimaera |
the.SG | book | POSS | Hēmi Kelly | both | with | Witi Ihimaera | |
<cultural_artistry> | <creation> | <human> | |||||
‘the book of (written by) Hēmi Kelly and Witi Ihimaera’ |
(5) | te | pukapuka | o | Kamupene C |
the.SG | book | POSS | C Company | |
<cultural_artistry> | <descriptor> | <institution> | ||
‘the book of (about) C Company’ |
(6) | ngā | tikanga | a | Te | Pākehā |
the.PL | customs | POSS | the.SG | European | |
<cultural_foundation> | <creation> | <human> | |||
‘the customs of the European(s)’ |
(7) | ngā | tikanga | o | te | kāinga |
the.PL | traditions | POSS | the.SG | home | |
<cultural_foundation> | <descriptor> | <place> | |||
‘the traditions of the home’ |
(8) | te | tikanga | o | te | kupu |
the.SG | meaning | POSS | the.SG | word | |
<property> | <feature> | <unit> | |||
‘the meaning of the word’ |
(9) | BTW | he | aha | te | tikanga | *a | #NZTL? |
BTW | what is | the.SG | meaning | POSS | #NZTL | ||
<property> | <feature> | <institution> | |||||
‘B(y) T(he) W(ay,) what is the meaning of #NZTL?’ |
(10) | i oho au waenganui i | te | kōrero | a | āku | tamariki |
TENSE wake I middle of | the.SG | conversation | POSS | my | children | |
<activity> | <nom_agentive> | <human> | ||||
‘I woke up in the middle of my children’s conversation [lit. the speaking of my children]’ |
(11) | E | tika | ana | te | kōrero | a | Haimona | nei! |
correct | the.SG | speech | POSS | Simon | PARTICLE | |||
<unit> | <creation> | <human> | ||||||
‘What Haimona said [lit. the speech of Haimona] is correct!’ |
(12) | me | whakanui | tatou12 | ngaa | koorero | o | eenei | motu |
should | celebrate | we | the.PL | speech | POSS | this | country | |
<unit> | <descriptor> | <place> | ||||||
‘We should celebrate the [good] things said about this country’ |
4.4. Type Variable
- Assign markers based on the RELA variable, but manually check the creation/ownership category and ignore ownership relationships. This is the most crucial step, as it applies to the largest proportion of data.
- For all ownership relationships, assign markers based on ten PSSM categories with fixed A/O forms, and manually check the rest.
- a_expected, if both the predicted and actual markers were a;
- a_unexpected, if the predicted marker was o but the user chose a;
- o_expected, if both the predicted and actual markers were o;
- o_unexpected, if the predicted marker was a but the user chose o.
5. Results
5.1. Semantic Variables by Frequency (RQ1)
5.2. Conformity with Descriptive Rules (RQ2)
5.3. Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Tweeters (RQ3)
6. Discussion and Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Throughout this article, we refer to the possessed item as the possessum, rather than the possessee. |
2 | |
3 | By way of convention, we will use small letters in italics (a/o) to refer to the alternation between (single-vowel) a or o forms in our target construction and non-italicised, capital letters (A/O) to represent the categories within the entire possessive system. |
4 | Since our data were collected prior to Twitter’s rebranding as X, we refer to the platform by its original name. |
5 | Throughout the paper, we write possessive markers in bold and use the following glosses: OBJ ‘indirect object’, PL ‘plural’, POSS ‘possessive marker’, and SG ‘singular’. Macrons (e.g., ā) denote long vowel sounds in Māori. |
6 | |
7 | This can include people who act as kaitiaki (e.g., doctor, teacher), as well as more traditional forms of shelter. |
8 | Information about the gender of each tweeter came from the RMT Corpus, and was primarily based on users’ self-reported pronouns. We acknowledge that Twitter users may claim identities that they do not possess or wish to possess. |
9 | There are still some formulaic names of entities in our data, but these represent only a small proportion of tweets and are not productively used. |
10 | The examples are written as they appear in our data, reflecting each speaker’s choice of possessive marker. Unexpected markers are prefixed with an asterisk. The semantic categories are given in the order <PSSM>, <RELA>, and <PSSR>, with <RELA> appearing directly beneath the possessive marker. |
11 | Even though links within tweets were redacted from the RMT Corpus, we still had access to the URLs for the tweets themselves and could, therefore, view them on Twitter if they were (still) publicly available. |
12 | We note the omission of a double-vowel in taatou, which is inconsistent with the remainder of the tweet. |
13 | |
14 | Across the whole dataset, there are 173 noun phrases that occur at least once as both possessum and possessor. |
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A Class (Marked) | O Class (Unmarked) |
---|---|
Small portable possessions | Large objects, and animals used for transport |
Kin of lower generations (see Example 1; apart from uri, ‘descendant’), and spouses | Kin of same or higher generations (see Example 2) |
Subjects of nominalisations of active transitive verbs (see Example 3), including derived nominals | Subjects of nominalisations of other verbs |
Consumables, apart from water and medicine | Wai ‘water’ and rongoā ‘medicine’ |
Animals not used for transport | Parts of whole, including body parts and clothing |
Variable | Cohen’s Kappa | Interpretation |
---|---|---|
PSSM | 0.89 | Near perfect |
PSSR | 0.88 | Near perfect |
RELA | 0.79 | Substantial |
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Trye, D.; Calude, A.S.; Harlow, R.; Keegan, T.T. Analysing A/O Possession in Māori-Language Tweets. Languages 2024, 9, 271. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9080271
Trye D, Calude AS, Harlow R, Keegan TT. Analysing A/O Possession in Māori-Language Tweets. Languages. 2024; 9(8):271. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9080271
Chicago/Turabian StyleTrye, David, Andreea S. Calude, Ray Harlow, and Te Taka Keegan. 2024. "Analysing A/O Possession in Māori-Language Tweets" Languages 9, no. 8: 271. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9080271