Building a Derived Passive
Tirohia lacks titiro's initial repetition; katakataina retains katakata.
How It Works
Recognizing repeated material does not identify a word's passive. Learn each lexical pair. Titiro, “look at, inspect”, has passive tirohia, without its repeated initial material. Katakata includes frequent laughing, giggling, and laughing at; its listed passive suffix -ina gives katakataina, retaining the repeated base.
Ordinary passive participant marking applies: the affected participant is subject, and an expressed actor follows e. A passive command can have an active English meaning: Tirohia te mahere, “Look at the map”.
The pairs establish different lexical outcomes, rather than rules that repetition must always disappear or remain. Do not extrapolate their stems or suffixes to other repeated bases. Arrows and hyphenated suffixes explain morphology; they are not pronunciation notation. Running Māori uses complete words, preserving ordinary macrons and genuine repeated vowels.
Examples (3)
- Tirohia te mahere.
Look at the map.
The passive imperative uses the listed passive of titiro.
- I tirohia ngā kākahu e te kaiako.
The clothes were inspected by the teacher.
The clothes are the affected subject.
- I katakataina te tamaiti e ngā ākonga.
The child was laughed at by the students.
Katakataina retains katakata and adds its listed suffix -ina.
How It Connects
Learn This First
Compare two established lexical pairs to see that recognizing reduplication does not predict whether copied material survives in a passive.
Related Patterns
Practice Building a Derived Passive in Bubblegum
Poppy, your AI tutor, writes Māori lessons at your level. Tap any grammar point in a lesson to see its full explanation.
