Some things we have figured out about Tagalog

Here are some Tagalog sentences:

(1)

Matangkad	ang	babae
tall	ANG	woman

'The woman is tall'

(2)

Kinain	ng	kalabaw	ang	damo
O.A.-ate	NG	water-buffalo	ANG	grass

'The water buffalo ate the grass'

(3)

Kumain	ang	kalabaw	ng	damo
S.A.-ate	ANG	water-buffalo	NG	grass

'The water buffalo ate grass'

(1-3) exhibit some of the basic facts we've seen about Tagalog. As (1) shows, Tagalog sentences don't have to have a verb (at least, not an overtly pronounced verb). If they do have a verb, though, as we see in (2-3), it can come in a number of different forms, which have consequences for how the NPs in the sentence are marked. Let's consider these issues one at a time.

NPs

Verbs

existentials

movement (cliticization, ay-fronting, wh-movement, scrambling)

binding

NPs

Typical constituents of an NP include a Case particle, adjectives, possessors, relative clauses, and the noun itself.

NPs are typically introduced by one of three types of particles, which may be indicating the Case of the NP: ang, ng (pronounced /naŋ/), or sa. If there is only one NP in the clause, it is typically marked with ang:

(4)

Umuwi	ang	lalaki
S.A.-went.home	ANG	man

'The man went home'

When there are multiple NPs in the clause, if there is a verb, it typically bears morphology indicating which of them is marked with ANG:

(5)

Binasa	ng	bata	ang	libro
O.A.-read	NG	child	ANG	book

'The child read the book'

(6)

Nagbasa	ang	bata	ng	libro
S.A.-read	ANG	child	NG	book

'The child read a book'

This is the morphology being glossed here as "O.A" (for "Object-ANG") and S.A. (for "Subject-ANG"). There are other choices besides these, as we'll see when we turn to verbs.

If an NP is not marked with ANG, it is marked with either NG or SA. SA is used in contexts where we might expect to find dative NPs in other languages; we find it on indirect objects, locations, and objects of most prepositions, for example:

(7)

Nagbigay	ang	guro	ng	libro	sa	estudyante
S.A.-gave	ANG	teacher	NG	book	SA	student

'The teacher gave a book to the student'

(8)

Nakatira	ang	Pangulo	sa	Maynila
S.A.-lives	ANG	president	SA	Manila

'The President lives in Manila'

(9)

Nag-uusap	ang	guro	tungkol	sa	estudyante
S.A.-is.talking	ANG	teacher	about	SA	student

'The teacher is talking about the student'

If an NP is not marked with ANG or SA, it is marked with NG. This includes subjects and objects when they are not ANG-marked, as you can see in (5-6) above.

We have been using the markers for common nouns, ANG, NG, and SA, as the names for these particles when we gloss Tagalog sentences. But we have seen that different markers are sometimes used, depending on the noun in question. Proper names have different markers, si, ni, and kay:

(10)

Nakita	ni	Juan	si	Maria
O.A.-saw	NG	Juan	ANG	Maria

'Juan saw Maria'

(11)

Nagbigay	ang	guro	ng	libro	kay	Bing
S.A.-gave	ANG	teacher	NG	book	SA	Bing

'The teacher gave a book to Bing'

We have also seen that pronouns have different forms, often not using any of these markers. A table of noun and pronoun forms follows (the common noun kalabaw means 'water buffalo'):

	ANG	NG	SA
common noun	ang kalabaw	ng kalabaw	sa kalabaw
proper name	si Juan	ni Juan	kay Juan
'I'	ako	ko	sa akin
'you'	ka, ikaw	mo	sa iyo
'he, she'	siya	niya	sa kanya
'we (incl.)'	tayo	natin	sa atin
'we (excl.)'	kami	namin	sa amin
'you (pl. or formal)'	kayo	ninyo	sa inyo
'they'	sila	nila	sa kanila

The one other kind of noun that we've seen in all three forms is 'anyone', which has ANG form sinuman, NG form ninuman, and SA form kaninuman.

It is still not clear what conditions the two variants of 'ANG-you' (ka and ikaw). One rule seems to be that ikaw is used if it ends up as the first word of the sentence, but there seems to be more to it than that.

Proper names and pronouns differ from common nouns in another way, besides having different forms. As we have seen, objects of verbs which do not mark their object with ANG are marked with NG. This is true for common nouns, but not for pronouns or proper names, which use the SA-form in this position instead:

(12)

Sino	ang	nakakita	ng	multo?
who	ANG	S.A.-saw	NG	ghost

'Who saw a ghost?'

(13)

Sino	ang	nakakita	kay	Juan?
who	ANG	S.A.-saw	SA	Juan

'Who saw Juan?'

(14)

Sino	ang	nakakita	sa	kanya?
who	ANG	S.A.-saw	SA	him/her

'Who saw him/her?'

We speculated that this might have something to do with how case-marking affects the semantics of direct objects, which seem to be specific when marked with ANG and obligatorily non-specific when marked with NG. On this theory, names and pronouns are resistant to being non-specific, which forces them not to take NG forms here.

Adjectives modifying a noun can go either before or after the noun. Between the adjective and the noun is a morpheme called a linker (glossed LI below):

(15)

ang	matangkad	na	lalaki
ANG	tall	LI	man

'the tall man'

(16)

ang	lalaking	matangkad
ANG	man-LI	tall

'the tall man'

Linkers are used in a number of different contexts, as we've seen, and their properties are slightly different depending on how they're used. A linker between an adjective and a noun can either be a free standing word na (as in (10)) or a suffix –ng on the preceding word (as in (11)). It takes the latter form whenever Tagalog phonotactics allow it to; that is, whenever the preceding word begins with a vowel or with /n/ (which is replaced by the linker:)

(17)

ang	masarap	na	pagkain
ANG	delicious	LI	food

'the delicious food'

(18)

ang	pagkaing	masarap
ANG	food-LI	delicious

'the delicious food'

Possessors of NPs are typically in the NG form, and follow the noun:

(19)

ang	bahay	ni	Maria/	ng	babae/	mo
ANG	house	NG	Maria	NG	woman	NG.you

'Maria's/the woman's/your house'

Pronominal possessors may also appear in a version of their SA form, without the particle sa; they then precede the noun, and a linker appears between them:

(20)

ang	kanyang	bahay
ANG	SA.he/she-LI	house

'his/her house'

Non-pronouns seem to be unwilling to appear in the construction in (20)—perhaps because, if you remove markers like sa and kay, there's no way to tell that they're dative. One reason to think that this might be relevant has to do with what happens when you omit part of the noun. Tagalog allows head nouns to be null, as in (21):

(21)

Mas	gusto	ko	ang	malaki
more	like	NG.I	ANG	big

'I like the big (one) better'

And when the head noun is null, the dative marker reappears on the dative possessor:

(22)

Mas	gusto	ko	ang	sa	kanya
more	like	NG.I	ANG	SA	SA.he/she

'I like his/hers better'

And in sentences of this type, non-pronouns may be dative possessors:

(23)

Mas	gusto	ko	ang	kay	Maria
more	like	NG.I	ANG	SA	Maria

'I like Maria's better'

Relative clauses are attached to the noun with a linker:

(24)

Gusto	ko	ang	librong	binili	mo
like	NG-I	ANG	book-LI	O.A.-bought	NG.you

'I like the book [that you bought]'

Like other forms of movement in Tagalog, relativization imposes requirements on the form of the verb you can use, which rule out examples like:

(25)

*Gusto	ko	ang	librong	bumili	ka
like	NG-I	ANG	book-LI	S.A.-bought	ANG.you

'I like the book [that you bought]'

We'll return to this fact when we look at movement.

Verbs

Verbs in Tagalog bear three main kinds of information. As we saw in the section on nouns, the verb bears morphology telling you which NP is marked with ANG. It also has what we've been calling tense, and what I think we called the abilitative.

Most of the examples we've looked at in class are either "subject-Ang" verbs or "object-Ang" verbs, though we've seen instances of other things being marked with ANG:

(26)

Nagbigay	ako	ng	pera	sa	pulubi
S.A.-gave	ANG.I	NG	money	SA	beggar

'I gave money to the beggar'

(27)

Ibinigay	ko	ang	pera	sa	pulubi
O.A.-gave	NG.I	ANG	money	SA	beggar

'I gave the money to the beggar'

(28)

Binigyan	ko	ng	pera	ang	pulubi
L.A.-gave	NG.I	NG	money	ANG	beggar

'I gave money to the beggar'

Any of the three arguments of a verb like give can get marked with ANG; in addition to the 'subject-Ang' and 'object-Ang' forms, there's what we could call an 'locative-Ang' form. We haven't done a detailed investigation of the different kinds of ANG-morphology on the verb (that would take us all semester), but at this stage a few things are clear.

First of all, the main split in this morphology seems to be between subject-ANG and everything else. This comes out in a number of ways. For one thing, the 'everything else' has some morphology in common which is missing in the subject-ANG forms; in the past tense, for example, everything but the subject-ANG form has an infix –in- which appears before the first vowel of the root:

	'ate'	'gave'
(root)	kain	bigay
subject-ANG	kumain	nagbigay
object-ANG	kinain	ibinigay
locative-ANG	kinainan	binigyan

The different non-subject-ANG forms are differentiated from each other by various suffixes and prefixes (like i- and –an).

There is a lot of variation between verbs on what morphology is taken to indicate ANG-hood of different nominals, particularly in the subject-ANG and object-ANG forms. For subject-ANG forms, we've talked about two main classes of verbs, which are sometimes called the um-verbs (like kumain 'ate') and the mag-verbs (like nagbigay 'gave'). Um-verbs form their past-tense ANG-forms with an infix –um-, and mag-forms form theirs with a prefix nag-.

All of this interacts with the morphology that's used to indicate tense. The different tenses for the three forms of 'eat' given above are listed below, along with the subject-ANG forms for 'give':

	'S.A.-eat'	'O.A.-eat'	'L.A.-eat'	'S.A.-give'
Past	kumain	kinain	kinainan	nagbigay
Present	kumakain	kinakain	kinakainan	nagbibigay
Future	kakain	kakainin	kakainan	magbibigay
Infinitive	kumain	kainin	kainan	magbigay

Fully deriving these forms is left as an exercise for the reader; processes that seem to be involved include reduplication (repetition of the first CV sequence of the root), infixation of –um- or –in-, alternation between m- and n- in the case of mag-verbs, and more pedestrian things like suffixation of –an and –in.

I haven't been indicating stress in what's above, but the type of reduplication used here interacts with stress. Here are the two main patterns of stress on verbs (I've underlined and boldfaced the stressed vowel):

	'S.A.-eat'	'S.A.-buy'
Past	kumain	bumili
Present	kumakain	bumibili
Future	kakain	bibili

So one way of analyzing this is that there are two types of verbs; for one of them, which includes kain, there's inherently stress on the penultimate syllable of the verb, while for the other there's no inherent stress. Moreover, reduplicated syllables receive stress if there's no inherent stress on the verb, and if stress isn't realized anywhere else it's final.

We have also seen some evidence that 'tense' is not a perfect name for what we're seeing in Tagalog verbs. English tense roughly indicates whether the event being described occurs before, after, or during the time at which the sentence is being uttered. Sometimes this seems to be true in Tagalog, too; for example, if I say the following, I'm saying that my leaving will take place at some time after my uttering the sentence:

(29)

Aalis	ako
S.A.-will.leave	ANG.I

'I'm going to leave'

On the other hand, you can also say things in Tagalog like:

(30)

Aalis	ako	at	biglang	dumating	si	Juan
S.A.-will.leave	ANG.I	and	suddenly-LI	S.A.-arrived	ANG	Juan

'I was about to leave, and suddenly Juan arrived'

Here you're not talking about something which will happen in the future; the story is about the past. But the verb of the first clause is describing something which is future with respect to the time the story is happening (in fact, it may describe something that never happens at all, which you were intending to do). In English we use the past tense on a verb in this situation, since the whole story is describing something that happened in the past. But in Tagalog you use what we're calling the 'future'. Apparently Tagalog tenses relate the time of the event described by the verb, not necessarily to the time that the sentence is uttered, but to some time which is somehow important or salient in the discussion. This can be the time the sentence is uttered (as in (29)), but it doesn't have to be (as (30) shows).

A third category for verbs is what I think we may have called the abilitative. This came up when we came across a Tagalog sentence something like:

(31)

Binasa	ko	ang	libro,
O.A.-read	NG.I	ANG	book

'I read the book...'

pero	masyadong	mahaba,	kaya	hindi	ko	tinapos
but	too-LI	long	so	not	NG.I	O.A.-finished

'...but it was too long, so I didn't finish it'

In English this sounds odd; if I say "I read the book", your assumption is that I finished it. Tagalog verbs don't convey this assumption; all the first clause of (31) means is that I tried to read the book, not that I succeeded. There's morphology that you can add that makes Tagalog verbs act like English ones in this regard; the sentence below, for example, sounds as odd in Tagalog as it does in English:

(32)

Nabasa	ko	ang	libro,
ABLE-O.A.-read	NG.I	ANG	book

'I read the book...'

pero	masyadong	mahaba,	kaya	hindi	ko	tinapos
but	too-LI	long	so	not	NG.I	O.A.-finished

'...but it was too long, so I didn't finish it'

Abilitative morphology is often translated as 'be able to' or 'manage to'. It's obligatory on several verbs that have to do with involuntary actions, like 'see':

(33)

Nakita	ko	ang	butiki
ABLE-O.A.-saw	NG.I	ANG	lizard

'I saw the lizard'

There isn't a non-abilitative version of this verb. Similarly, the verb pansin means different things depending on whether you add abilitative morphology:

(34)

Napansin	ko	siya
ABLE-O.A.-noticed	NG.I	ANG.he/she

'I noticed him/her'

(35)

Pinansin	ko	siya
O.A.-noticed	NG.I	ANG.he/she

'I paid attention to him/her'

Abilitative and non-abilitative versions of bili 'buy' are given below:

	ABLE-S.A.	S.A.	ABLE-O.A.	O.A.	ABLE-L.A.	L.A.
Past	nakabili	bumili	nabili	binili	nabilhan	binilhan
Present	nakakabili	bumibili	nabibili	binibili	nabibilhan	binibilhan
Future	makakabili	bibili	mabibili	bibilhin	mabibilhan	bibilhan
Infinitive	makabili	bumili	mabili	bilhin	mabilhan	bilhan

As you can see, the abilitative morphology is a prefix, maka- in for the subject-ANG form and ma- for the other forms. It participates in the same m-n alternation for tense that the mag-verbs use (and also uses reduplication in the present and the future, as all verbs do).