Papers in Philippine Linguistics No. 5

2012

Santiago, Paul Julian. 2014. The search for the "Lost" Auxiliaries: Motion clauses and imperfective aspect in Kalanguya, Northern Philippines. Handbook of the 148th Meeting of the Linguistic Society of Japan, pp248-253. Kyoto: Linguistic Society of Japan.

1979

This study accepts the assumption that the verb is central to the syntax and semantics of the Cebuano l predicational sentence. It aims to investigate exhaustively the morphology of Cebuano verbs using Case Grammar as the mode l of analysis. Although Case Grammar has attempted to handle equat ional sentences by posit ing the Essive case , these sentences are excluded in this analysis since their V nodes are lex ically empty and therefore do not exhibit structure s that are morpho logically interesting. Two types of verbal affixes are ident ified in this study : the case re lated affixes and the extra-case affixes. Case-related affixes mark the verb for the particular actant that the speaker wishes to topic alise. 2 (Actant s refer to nouns , noun phrases , sentences , preposit ional phrases and adverbials that can enter into a case relationship with the verb .) Extra-case affixes include the aspectual affixes and the affixes that allow the verb to restrict or specialise it s semantic range. These latter affixes are called specialisation affixes 3 in this study. The following are the six specific tasks wh ich this study has chosen to tackle. 1) To determine the allowab le cases that occur with each verb. Each verb is provided with a case frame , wh ich is a formalised device to show how the actant s that the grammar allows to occur with the verb may be related to it. The case frame specifies the kinds of cases , both the optional and the obligatory , that a verb may take. It does not , however, specify the maximum numb er of cases that can occur with a particular verb in any part icular simp lex. This is specified by the grammar. For example, in Cebuano , disregarding the Time , the Cause and the Locative , which generally ha v e no co-occurrence restric tions with other cases when they are not chosen Topic , only four other cases at the mo st may be allowed in the same sentence at any time. l Cebuano is one of the major Philippine languages. It had, in 1969 , as recorded in the 1969 census , 6,529 ,882 speakers , the biggest number recorded for any of the major languages. It is the language of the provinces of Cebu , Bohol , Negros Oriental , the western portions of the Leyte provinces , and of many provinces in the island of Mindanao. 2 An ac tant that is topicalised is marked by ang/s i in surface structure. This phenomenon is also reflected in the affixation of the verb. For example , if the actant fulfilling the role of Agent is topicalised, t h e verb will be affixed by mag muor maN-. 3 These affixes are explained in detail in 3.11. and 3.12. 4 This restriction is probably dictated by the limitations on memory ; i.e. the speaker and the list ener cannot cope with remembering more than a few cases at any one time in an ut terance. 2) To categori se verbs according to the nature of their case environ ments. Verbs with the same case frame allow the same kind of cases to co occur with them. This typology is done to find out how and in what ways verbs may be similar or different. 3) To determine the extra-case non-aspectual affixes that are allowed for each verb. 'lawyer ' 'back pack ' 'child' 'meat ' 'yeast plant ' 'mushro om ' 'dampness ' 'tame anima l ' 'diffe rent ' 'scorched ' 'common co ld ' 'hunger ' 'numbness ' 'water in which ri ce 'stirring spoon ' 'plough ' 'temporary fence ' 'leve l trai l ' 26 Benefactive (B) , "the case of the animate being for whose bene fit the action ident ified by the verb is carried out " (Diller 1971:17 9). pa litan ku SIY A ug muny ika sa iyang ad law 'I wi n buy her a do n on her birthday. ' mag lutuq aku ug biku para NIMU ugmaq , I wi l l cook biku for you tomorrow. ' salinan ku SIY A ug pagkaqun 'I wi ll leave him some food. ' Cause (C) , which "provide s the reason why the action or state ident ified by the verb has , is, or will occur" (Diller 1971:187). mi tambuk siva sa BITAM INA 'He became stout because of the vitamins. ' nahubug aku sa TUBAQ , I go t drunk because of the tubaq. ' Experiential (E) , the case of the animate noun that is affected by the psychological state or condition expressed by the verb. nasukuq SIYA na kuq 'She is/wa s angry wi th me. ' gimi ngaw SIYA sa iyang manga anak 'She misses/mi ssed her children. ' Goal (G) , the case of the ac tant "which indic ates either (a) the obj ect , being , or place toward whi ch the ac tion or state is directed , or (b) the ac tual recipient of the action indicated by the verb" (Diller 1971 : 244). gihatag nila sa IRUQ ang pa nqus nga pagkaqun , They gave the spoi led food to the do g. ' nidagan ang bataq ngadtu sa iyang NANAY 'The chi Zd ran to his mo ther. ' gisulatan niya ang iyang TRATU , He wro te to his girlfriend. ' Instrumental (I) "which marks the actant wh ich expresses the object or being which is us ed as an instrument in carrying out the ac t ion or state ident ified by the verb " (Diller 1971 :250). gibunalan niya sa llPAK ang bataq 'He beat the chiZd with the stick. '

IJASS JOURNAL, 2024

This paper discusses the syntactic and semantic analysis of Balinese motion verbs. It is to determine the forms of Balinese motion verbs and their constructions as well as semantic representation. This study uses the theory of verb classes proposed by Dixon (2011) in his book entitled A Semantic Approach to English Grammar. Using the book containing Balinese stories, and by applying a descriptive qualitative method, it was found that Balinese motion verb vary in terms of form and meaning. Seen from the forms of the verbs, Balinese motion verbs could be in the base form or the derived form, depending on their usages in the sentences. Motion verbs can be transitive or intransitive, some Balinese motion verbs take just one role, the thing moving, others take more than one. It was also found that Balinese motion verbs may involve the locus, in which they may be implicitly or explicitly expressed in the sentences. It is necessary to state that the movement of the elements of the sentence is quite depended upon the semantic representation of the verb

2012

In the literature of Philippine linguistics, Goal-Focus (GF) constructions in Tagalog have been generally considered as transitive, both syntactically and semantically; however, whether Actor-Focus (AF) constructions should be analyzed as syntactically transitive or intransitive is controversial. This paper addresses the question of the syntactic transitivity of Tagalog AF constructions from a new perspective. We argue two points in this paper. First, AF constructions do not form a homogenous construction type but rather consist of both syntactically and semantically varying construction types: ambient, agentive, patientive, reflexive, and antipassive types. Moreover, AF construction types other than antipassive are clearly intransitive. This means that only antipassive AF constructions should be examined in a discussion of the syntactic transitivity of AF constructions. Second, it is argued that antipassive AF constructions are syntactically intransitive; specifically, in this construction type, nominative agent NPs behave like grammatical arguments of GF constructions, but genitive patient NPs do not. It is concluded that Tagalog AF constructions are best analyzed as syntactically intransitive.

in : "Enfield, N. J. and Bernard Comrie (editors), 2015, "Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art". Boston and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.", p.586-632, 2015

This paper aims to continue and complement the cross-linguistic studies of motion event encoding initiated by Talmy’s seminal work on a semantic typol-ogy of motion events (1972, 1985), given that his classification of languages based on path encoding cannot account for some constructions found in Southeast (and East) Asian languages. After a brief review of Talmy’s typology and its evolution, we will examine some Southeast Asian constructions and means to encode motion and path that have been neglected by previous studies. The following section will pres-ent the elicitation material developed by the Trajectory project that helps to collect comparable data on motion. The data collected on two Burmese dialects will then be presented, along with new data on hitherto unknown constructions, leading us to revise previ-ous typologies of motion events. In particular we examine issues such as serialization, and also the status of the verb (satellite vs. head) in the constructions expressing motion.

2009

Cognitive Linguistics, 1995

The purpose of this paper is to question some of the basic assumpiions concerning motion verbs. In particular, it examines the assumption that "come" and "go" are lexical universals which manifest a universal deictic Opposition. Against the background offive working hypotheses about the nature of'come" and ''go", this study presents a comparative investigation of t wo unrelated languages-Mparntwe Arrernte (Pama-Nyungan, Australian) and Longgu (Oceanic, Austronesian). Although the pragmatic and deictic "suppositional" complexity of"come" and "go" expressions has long been recognized, we argue that in any given language the analysis of these expressions is much more semantically and systemically complex than has been assumed in the literature. Languages vary at the lexical semantic level äs t o what is entailed by these expressions, äs well äs differing äs t o what constitutes the prototype and categorial structure for such expressions. The data also strongly suggest that, ifthere is a lexical universal "go", then this cannof be an inherently deictic expression. However, due to systemic Opposition with "come", non-deictic "go" expressions often take on a deictic Interpretation through pragmatic attribution. Thus, this crosslinguistic investigation of "come" and "go" highlights the need to consider semantics and pragmatics äs modularly separate.

Proceeding • International Conference of Indonesian linguistic society, 2018

This paper explores the functions of the directionals in the Dela language of Eastern Indonesia: neu ‘3SG.go, motion away from speaker’, nema ‘3SG.come, motion towards the speaker’ and n-eti ‘3SG.go, motion away from the speaker and motion towards addressee’. First, this paper gives an overview of the semantics and typology of the directionals. It then describes the directionals as main verbs and as verbs in serial verb constructions (SVCs). Each of the directionals can head a predicate, and thus can function as main verb. The directionals are also found in SVCs as the V1 or V2 of the serialisation. Typically, they indicate the direction of the action referred to by the main verb. The paper also discusses the function of the directionals as deictic particles and a verbal preposition. Each of the directionals can function as a deictic particle indicating both the distance from or motion away from the speaker (neu), closeness to or motion towards the speaker (nema), and closeness to or motion towards the addressee (n-eti). However, only the directional neu can function as a verbal preposition expressing dative-benefactive and locative functions. Hence, there is a semantic extension of the use of neu. In addition, neu in this function is semantically bleached of its verbal meaning ‘movement away from speaker’ as it is also used even when the speaker is presented as the recipient. Semantic extension and bleaching are two mechanisms involved in grammaticalization. Therefore, this paper argues that the deictic particles and the verbal preposition are undergoing a grammaticalization process.