14 Tagalog (The World's Major Languages).pdf

Tagalog

Paul Schachter

Revised by Lawrence A. Reid

1 Historical Background

Tagalog is a member of the Central Philippine subgroup of Philippine languages, forming

part of the Western-Malayo-Polynesian set of Austronesian languages. It belongs in a

subgroup with Bikol, Bisayan and Mansakan languages and was originally probably

native to the eastern Visayas or northeast Mindanao in the Central Philippines (Zorc

1993). By the time the Spanish arrived in the Philippines (1521), Tagalog speakers had

migrated north into the southern part of the island of Luzon in the Philippines, with

Tagalog becoming the major language spoken in Manila and surrounding provinces; it

has in recent years spread as a second language over virtually the entire Philippine

archipelago. Thus, while only about a quarter of the population of the Philippines were

Tagalog-speaking in 1940, in 1970 approximately half of the population were, and

today it is estimated that well over 90 per cent of the 80 million total population of the

Philippines is either a rst- or second-language speaker of the language.

Tagalog was selected in 1937 as the national language of the Philippines, and was

established as such in the 1987 Constitution of the country. Under the name of Filipino,

Tagalog is now taught in schools throughout the Philippines. The spread of the lan-

guage has also been favoured by urbanisation – Tagalog is native to the largest city of

the Philippines, Manila, and it is used as a lingua franca in many cities with mixed

populations – as well as by its prominence in the mass media.

The dialect of Tagalog which is considered standard and which underlies Filipino is

the educated dialect of Manila. Other important regional dialects are those of Bataan,

Batangas, Bulacan, Tanay-Paete and Tayabas. The lexicon of educated Manila Tagalog

contains many borrowings from Spanish and English, the former reecting over three

centuries of colonial domination of the Philippines by Spain, the latter reecting the

period of American hegemony (1898

1946), as well as the current status of English as

one of the languages (along with Filipino) of higher education in the Philippines and a

lingua franca second in importance only to Filipino itself. Spanish and English have

–

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TAGALOG

also had some impact on the phonology of Tagalog (see Section 2, below), but little if any

on the syntax and morphology. (See Section 4, however, for some instances of borrowed

Spanish gender distinctions.)

2 Phonology and Orthography

Tagalog phonology has been signi cantly affected by the incorporation into the lan-

guage of many loanwords from Spanish, English and other languages. One effect of

this incorporation has been an expansion of the phonemic inventory of the language, an

expansion that has in uenced both the vowel and the consonant systems.

Contemporary Tagalog has the ve vowel phonemes shown in Table 49.1.

Table 49.1 Tagalog Vowel Phonemes

Front

Central

Back

High

Mid

Low

This ve-vowel system no doubt developed out of a three-vowel system in which [i]

and [e] were allophones of a single phoneme and [u] and [o] were allophones of

another. Contrasts between /i/ and /e/ and between /u/ and /o/ are, however, well

established in contemporary Tagalog, not only in borrowed vocabulary (misa /mi:sa/

‘

mass

’

vs mesa /me:sa/

‘

table

’

, bus /bu:s/

‘

bus

’

vs bos /bo:s/

‘

boss

’

) but, albeit less

commonly, in native vocabulary as well (iwan /

i:wan/

‘

leave

’

vs aywan /

e:wan/

‘

not

known

). Vowel length in

non-word-nal syllables is phonemic, as the following examples illustrate: aso /

’

, babuy /ba:buy/

‘

pig-like person

’

vs baboy /ba:boy/

‘

pig

’

a:so/

‘

dog

’

, aso /

aso/

‘

smoke

’

, maglalakbay /magla:lakbay/

‘

will

travel

’

, maglalakbay

/maglalakbay/

. In word- nal syllables of native words, vowel length is not

phonemic: the general rule is that phrase- nal syllables are long, non-phrase- nal syl-

lables short. Thus sibat /sibat/ ‘ spear ’ is pronounced [siba:t] phrase- nally, but not in

sibat ba? /sibat ba/ [sibat ba:] ‘ is it a spear? ’ Word- nal syllables of non-native words

may, however, show phonemic length. For example, borrowed monosyllabic names

have a long vowel in any context: e.g. Si Bob ba? /si ba:b ba/ [si ba:b ba:] ‘ Is it Bob? ’

There are sixteen consonant phonemes that occur in native words. These are dis-

played in Table 49.2. Probably [d] and [r] were once allophones of a single phoneme,

as is evidenced by a good deal of free or morphophonemically conditioned alternation

between them (e.g. daw /daw/ ~ raw /raw/ ‘ they say ’ , dalita /dalita ? / ‘ poverty ’ vs

maralita /mara:lita ? / ‘ poor ’ ). There is no doubt, however, that they now contrast, not

only in loanwords (dos /do:s/

‘

travel a lot

’

‘ two ’ vs Rose /ro:s/

‘ Rose ’ ) but in native words as well

(maramdamin /maramdamin/

In addition to the consonant phonemes found in native Tagalog words, shown in

Table 49.2, there are several others that only occur in loanwords but are commonly

heard in the speech of many Tagalog speakers, especially those with higher education

in English. These include the labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ and the alveolar affricates

‘

sensitive

’

vs madamdamin /madamda:min/

‘

moving

’

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TAGALOG

Table 49.2 Tagalog Consonant Phon emes

Labial

Dental

Alveolar

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

Voiceless stop

Voiced stop

Nasal

Fricative

Lateral

Tap or trill

Glide

/ and /

/ (typically represented as ts and dy respectively), e.g. Flora /o:ra/

‘

Flora

’

Victor /vi:ktor/

‘

Victor

’

, tsuper /

u:per/

‘

driver of a motor vehicle

’

, kotse /ko:

‘

car

’

and dyip /

, although their status as fully adopted phonemes in the language

is questionable (French 1988: 56).

In native words tautosyllabic consonant clusters are restricted to syllable-initial clusters in

which the second consonant is a glide: e.g. diyan /dyan/

i:p/

‘

jeep

’

In loanwords syllable-initial clusters whose second consonant is /l/ or /r/ are also common,

e.g. plato /pla:to/

‘

there

’

, buwan /bwan/

‘

month

’

; and various syllable-nal clusters are

found in borrowings from English, e.g. homework /ho:mwo:rk/, dimples /di:mpols/, bridge

/bri:ds/.

ThemostcommonsyllablepatternsareCVandCVC,inboth nal and non- nal sylla-

bles, and CV:, in non- nal syllables only. When a CVC syllable occurs as the initial syllable

of disyllabic word, a very wide range of medial CC clusters is attested. Word-internal

geminate clusters do not, however, occur.

Stress is closely tied to vowel length, with some analysts considering stress as primary,

while others consider vowel length to be primary. Syllables with phonemically long vowels

are always stressed. Syllables with vowels that are not phonemically long but are pho-

netically long as a result of their occurrence in phrase- nal position are also stressed if

there are no phonemically long vowels in the phrase- nal word. Thus the nal syllable

of magaling /magaliŋ/ [magali:ŋ] ‘ excellent ’ is stressed in citation, but in magaling na

/magaliŋ na/ [magaliŋ na:] ‘ it ’ s excellent now ’ , the stress falls on na instead. Unstressed

vowels are not reduced and the language is syllable-timed rather than stress-timed.

A signicant morphophonemic alternation that occurs across word boundaries includes

the replacement of word-nal glottal stop /

‘

plate

’

, grado /gra:do/

‘

grade

’

/ by vowel length in non-phrase-nal position,

e.g. maputi /maputi

‘

white

’

, maputi nga /maputi:

‘

’

s really white

’

, maputi nga

po /maputi:

a: po

‘

’

s really white, sir/madam

’

. Signicant morphophonemic alter-

nations within the word include a

‘

rightward

’

shift of vowel length

–

and hence of

stress

–

before the verbal sufxes -an and -in, e.g. tasa /ta:sa/

‘

assessment

’

+ -an

tasahan /tasa:han/

‘

to assess s.t.

’

, pala /pa:la/

‘

shovel

’

+-in

palahin /pala:hin/

‘

shovel s.t.

, insertion of /h/ between a vowel nal word and the verbal sufxes -an and

-in (as in the previous examples), and a set of assimilations involving pre xes that end

in nasals, such as the verbal pre x /maN-/ (where /N/ represents an unspeci ed nasal

consonant): e.g. /maN-/+/p/

’

-/, as in

mamili (/maN-/+/pi:li ? / ? /mami:li ? /) ‘ choose ’ , manakot (/maN-/+/ta:kot/ ? /mana:kot/)

‘ frighten ’ , mangailangan (/maN-/+ka ? ilaŋan/ ? /maŋa ? ilaŋan/) ‘ need ’ .

Tagalog is not a tone language. It does, however, have a complex intonational

system. As in English, intonation may be used to distinguish pragmatically different

/mam-/, /maN-/+/t/

/man-/, /maN-/+/k/

/ma

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TAGALOG

sentence types (e.g. requests for information vs requests for repetition), to express speaker

attitudes (e.g. cordiality), to indicate contrast or emphasis, etc.

Prior to the Spanish colonisation of the Philippines, a syllabary, probably ultimately of

Indian origin, had been used for writing Tagalog, but under the Spanish this was sup-

planted by a version of the Roman alphabet. Nowadays Tagalog uses the same 26 letters

that are used for writing English, although the seven letters c, f, j, q, v, x and z are used

chiey in proper names of foreign origin and in certain other borrowings from English

or Spanish. These seven letters are not included in the conventional Tagalog alphabet,

or abakada, which consists of 20 letters (including the digraph ng, used for /

/), in the

following order: abkdeghilmnngoprstuwy.The writing system does not

indicate vowel length (or stress), and does not mark / ? / except as a hyphen between

consonant nal pre xes and words that begin with a glottal stop that would otherwise

be written as vowel-initial, for example mag-iigi /mag ? i: ? i:gi/ ‘ to adjust ’ . Thus words

that differ from one another only in vowel length (see examples above) or only in that

one ends in a vowel and the other in / ? / (e.g. bata /ba:ta/ ‘ bathrobe ’ and bata /ba:ta ? /

‘ child ’ ) are spelled identically. There is also some inconsistency – as well as some

debate – with regard to the spelling of loanwords, e.g. molecule vs molikyul. And there

are two very common words, the case-marking form /naŋ/ and the plural form /maŋa/,

whose conventional spellings, respectively ng and mga, are non-phonemic. With these

and a few other exceptions, however, there is a fairly good match between spelling and

pronunciation.

3 Syntax

The syntax of Tagalog and other Philippine languages has been the subject of an on-

going debate among syntacticians in recent years, as a clearer understanding of the nature

of the relationships between the different constructions in the language have become

clearer, and the goals of linguistic theory and description have changed. The rst grammars

by Spanish linguists and missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries described

the language in traditional Latin grammar terminology, but following the structuralist ana-

lyses of Bloom eld in the early part of the twentieth century, a model was established

that typically described the language as containing a ‘ focus ’ system thought to be

unique among the world ’ s languages, in which the semantic role of one of the argu-

ments, actor, experiencer, goal, instrument, location, bene ciary, etc., could be marked

with an af x on the verb, thus ‘ focusing ’ that participant and creating a paradigm of

structural types, one of which was active (or ‘ actor focus ’ ) and the others passive (goal

passive or ‘ object focus ’ , instrument passive or ‘ instrument focus ’ , and so on). The

‘ focused ’ argument has been variously labelled as topic, subject, trigger and pivot.

Various problems with the ‘ focus ’ model, including the fact that the so-called ‘ pas-

sive ’ constructions do not function as typical passives, but are the unmarked way to

express any structure containing a de nite patient, have resulted in a number of differ-

ent approaches that are more consistent with modern linguistic theory. These approa-

ches fall into two main categories, those that consider Tagalog (or some other

Philippine language) to be an ergative or a split-ergative language, and those that con-

sider it to have either an

voice system. To

date, the ergative analysis is the most common among studies written in a wide range

of theoretical frameworks, including Relational Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar,

‘

active

’

‘ uid

’

‘

hybrid

’

‘

symmetrical

’

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TAGALOG

Categorial Grammar, Lexicase, Localist frameworks, Dixon

s Basic Linguistic Theory,

Government and Binding, and Minimalist frameworks, as well as general typological

approaches, and will be the approach followed in the following description.

Tagalog is a predicate-initial language. That is, in the most common and basic type

of clause, words or phrases that express predicates precede words or phrases that express

arguments. Predicates belong to one of two classes: verbal and non-verbal. The structures

of basic clauses containing these two types of predicates are discussed in turn below.

Clauses with verbal predicates consist of a verb followed by one or more arguments

(noun phrases, pronouns, etc.). These arguments do not in general occur in a xed order,

although the

’

, referred to hereafter as the grammatical subject (or

absolutive noun phrase), commonly occurs last, and word order is not used in distin-

guishing the roles that are assigned to the various arguments, e.g. in distinguishing an

actor argument (see below) from a patient argument. Instead these roles are indicated

by the form of the verb and/or the form of the argument expressions themselves.

The verb typically contains an af x – which may be a pre x, an in xorasuf x – that

indicates the semantic role of the grammatical subject. This phrase has the same form,

whatever the semantic role of its referent. The semantic roles of any other arguments in the

clause, however, are indicated by the forms of the noun phrases themselves: for example,

an argument that expresses the actor of a transitive clause (that is, the ergative noun phrase)

is introduced by ng /naŋ/ if it is a common noun, or by ni if it is a personal name.

As an ergative language, the case-marking of the actor or experiencer of an intran-

sitive sentence (indicated in Examples 1a

‘

focused noun phrase

’

b as S) is identical to that of the most

patient-like argument of a transitive sentence (indicated in Examples 2a

–

d as P). In

these sentences the speciers of the S and the P phrases are shown in bold font. The

agent of a transitive sentence (indicated as A) carries ergative case-marking. Examples

–

d are also transitive sentences, having the same structural features as 2a, except that

the semantic role of the absolutive is different, location in 2b, beneciary in 2c, and

instrument in 2d, each marked by a different form of the transitive verb. Of each of the

square-bracketed noun phrases in the examples, only those marked as S, A and P are

core noun phrases, implied by the verbal semantics, others phrases are adjuncts and

optional. (All of the verbs in these examples contain a reduplicating imperfective aspect

pre xCV:-,thusaalis /

–

alis/; other af xes, shown in bold font, either mark the semantic

role of the absolutive phrase, or carry other aspectual meanings whose functions will be

explained in Section 4).

Intransitive

a Aalis [ ang tindero] abs. [sa Lunes.] loc.

will.leave S storekeeper Monday

‘ The storekeeper will leave on Monday. ’

Mag luluto

[ ang

tindero] abs.

[para

sa babae.] ben.

will.cook

storekeeper

woman

‘ The storekeeper will cook for the woman. ’

Transitive

a Aalis

[ng

tindero] erg.

[

ang

bigas] abs.

[sa sako.] loc.

will.take.out A

storekeeper P

rice

sack

‘

A/The storekeeper will take the rice out of the sack.

’

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