A morphosyntactic analysis of the pronominal system of Philippine languages

• Main Author: Dita, Shirley N.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2010
• Subjects: Philippine languages—Pronoun; Dumagat language (Casiguran)—Pronoun; Philippine languages—Pronominals; Dumagat language (Casiguran)—Pronominals; Language and Literacy Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/2732
• Institution: De La Salle University

Pronominal orientation is widely argued to be universal component of human languages. Meanwhile, the pronominal system of Philippine languages (henceforth, PL) has always been an obscure subject of investigation. With approximately 150 living languages, the structures of pronominals are just as many. This study attempts to explicate the grammatical functions, along with other known phenomena such as cliticization, homography, inclusivity/exclusivity, person-deixis interface, and hierarchy of some languages in the Philippines. Using an ergative-absolutive analysis, this cross-linguistic investigation of Philippine languages presents examples that illustrate the distinctive features of personal pronouns. Using a 100,000-word corpus for each language included, there are various similarities and differences revealed by the study: (1) some languages allow encliticization and some don't; (2) homography, as well as inclusivity/exclusivity, is a persistent feature of the languages; and (3) the strength of hierarchy poses semantic constraints, among others.