How we speak: Things we (don't) have control over

how Māori expresses possession

My mom forgot how to be a grown-up. Her mind doesn’t work very well anymore. Her walk is too slow. Her speech is too slurred.

The words "my", "your," "her/his” are called ‘possessive determiners’ in linguistics. But do they really express possession?

my mom

my child

my dog

my pants

my body

my job

my parcel

my dress

my book

my dental hygienist

my class

my country

my language

my fault

my opinion

my life

my pimple

my garbage

my issues

my frustration

How exactly are all these things “mine”? The only thing on this list that I truly own are my pants. Maybe my body. And even that is debatable.

“My frustration” is something that I feel, “my language” is something I speak — or don’t speak. I may have never visited “my country” and I might be too oblivious to what “my issues” are to own them.

The only thing that’s in common in all these is that they all have some sort of connection with me. Even with supposedly simple objects, it is not that simple:

"My parcel" could be a parcel I’ve sent, or received. Or if I’m a mailman it could be one of the parcels that I’ve collected at the post office to deliver to customers.

"My book" could be a book that I'm reading or that I have written. Or maybe it’s a book I was given to hide my detective notes in during a game of Clue.

"My dress" could be a dress I own but never wore, one that I'm wearing but have to give back to the photo crew after the shoot or one that I sewed for someone else (e.g. If I'm a famous fashion designer I want people to know that that dress is one of mine).

Or it could be a dress that I saw in a store but can't afford to buy, but I like it so much that every time I pass by the store window I refer to it as "my dress."

Even "my child" is ambiguous. It could mean the child you have parented and are responsible for. But if you're a velveteen rabbit saying "my child" you mean “a child that's responsible for you.”

Whenever there is a phrase or a word that means more than one thing, there is a good chance that there is / was / could be a language that explicitly encodes this difference in its grammar.

It turns out that Māori does this with possession.

Two ways to say ‘my’ in Māori

There are two ways to express possession in Māori depending on the relationship between the possessor and the thing possessed.

You use the words tāku, tāu, tāna... ("my", "your", "his/hers") when the thing you’re talking about is something you have responsibility for or have control over — e.g. children, money, man-made things, actions, etc.

But if the thing in question is something you do not have control over, (e.g. friends, parents, siblings, feelings) you have to use different words for “my,” “your,” “his/her”: tōku, tōu, tōna.

So you say tāku tamāhine 'my daughter' but tōku mama 'my mom' because you have responsibility for your daughter but not your mother.

I have not consulted a native Māori speaker but I imagine that if you use the wrong word with the wrong noun — e.g. if you say tōku tamaiti for 'my child' instead of tāku tamaiti you will sound like a velveteen rabbit talking about a child who is responsible for you, and not like a parent.

But remember that language is both comfortingly logical and amazingly unpredictable. Things are rarely completely clear-cut.

Maybe early humans were too busy running away from predators to keep nouns in their appropriate categories, or maybe the concepts of possession, control, and responsibility are not as clear-cut as we’d like them to be — whatever the reason, the full list of nouns in each category leaves something to wonder about:

The tāku category (i.e. people and things we have responsibility for / control over) includes:

children

spouses

technology and machinery not used for transport (e.g., computers, bull-dozers)

pets

man-made things (but not clothing), e.g., money; pens, paper, cups, knives;

actions

food and drink (but not drinking water).

The tōku category, i.e things we supposedly have no control over / responsibility for includes:

parents, siblings, friends

feelings, thoughts, qualities

transport

shelter

large immovable man-made things

drinking water and medicine

clothes

parts of the body

I like the idea that we have no control over our feelings but do have control over our actions. It is less clear why we have control over money, pens, paper, cups (!) and knives, but not clothes. (In my world, all these items seem to do whatever they want without consulting me).

So while it's cool that this distinction exists, unless you're an anthropologist researching Māori's relationships with money and clothing, I would avoid reading too much into this, because, as cool as it is — in the end, it's just grammar. If you're learning Māori, you're better off just memorizing what goes in each category.

Still, it warms my heart to know that if you’re talking about your horse, you would refer to it differently depending on whether you consider this horse your pet (in which case you’ll say tāku hoiho) or if you mostly use it as a mode of transportation (tōku hoiho).

A comforting image of a child kissing a horse. Mostly because I needed one today. If this girl speaks Māori I bet she’d say tāku hoiho and not tōku hoiho. (Photo by Lucie Hošová on Unsplash)

But mostly, I wonder what this language does when things turn upside down and you have to be the one taking your mom out for a walk, helping her put her shoes on, and generally taking responsibility for her wellbeing.

I know what. It does nothing. Because it’s not the language’s job to precisely reflect the reality you live in, no matter how uncomfortable or completely nonsensical it becomes.