Page:A Concise Grammar of the Malagasy Language.djvu/51

 The Indefinite Article.—The Malagasy language has no indefinite article, but the place of it is supplied in one or other of these four ways:—

1. By omitting nỳ; as, nahìta òmby àho, 'I saw an ox', (or, oxen); (2) by the use of anànkirày and sasàny in the half-definite sense of some, certain; (3) by using the relative pronoun izày, in an indefinite sense, as, ìza nò hatòky izày adàla? 'who would trust a fool' (or, one who is a fool)? (4) by using the verb mìsy; as, mìsy òlona namàngy àzy, 'a person (or, some persons) visited him'; misìa mànkatỳ ankìzi-làhy, 'let a servant (or one, or some, of the servants) come here'.

There are also in Malagasy the following common personal prefixes, i, ri, ra, ray, ilày (ilèy, ilèhy), and andrìana. Of these, i and ra, though generally prefixed to proper nouns, are sometimes prefixed to common nouns used as names of persons; as, ivàdinào, 'your wife'; ralèhilàhy, 'the (or, that) man'.

Nò is a particle which is both emphatic and exclusive, and not a substitute or equivalent for the English copula 'is'. As the Rev. W. E. Cousins says:—"It serves to make an emphatic assertion, and at the same time implies the exclusion or discrimination of some object or objects to which the predicate used in that assertion does not apply; this discriminated object often being stated in the following clause, as in the proverb, Nỳ kitòza nò tsàra ràha mihàntona; fà nỳ tèny tsỳ tsàra mihàntona. 'It is kitòza