Verbs in Māori: The problem of definitional criteria

Abstract

A range of different types of criteria has been applied at different points in the history of the classification of verbs in Māori. These have included syntactic and morphological criteria, semantic criteria and derivational criteria. Unfortunately, these criteria have not always been applied consistently and this has led to considerable disagreement about the classification of verbs in Māori. In this paper, different accounts of verb classification in Māori are critically examined and it is argued that some of the disagreements can be resolved by acknowledging (a) that words in Māori may be assigned to different word classes in different contexts, and (b) that word classes and sub-classes should be determined on the basis of morphological and syntactic criteria with semantic and derivational information playing a role only in so far as they have observable syntactic and/or morphological consequences.