A Brief Syntactic Typology of Philippine Languages - Academia Sinica

Lawrence A. Reid and Hsiu-chuan Liao
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(79) Ilokano (Vanoverbergh 1955:195)
Maidaítan 9 ití bádo.
[+sttv,+bfct]
sew:for DET coat
‘(He) has a coat made for him.’
3.3.2.1.1.5 Statives with expressed actors
Although stative verbs typically do not allow actors, some languages do allow
actors to occur with MA verbs, which then also carry a potential or abilitative (in perfective
forms) meaning. In at least some of these languages the structure is apparently being
reinterpreted as a transitive construction, creating a new class of transitive structures;
that is, one that takes a Genitive Agent, as well a Nominative Patient, and requires
Patients to be only potentially or involuntarily affected.
(80) Mamanwa (Miller and Miller 1976:82)
Nabelad ya maimpis ka segaq.
[+sttv,+dfct]
be sunned DET child DET sun
‘The child was overheated by the sun.’
(81) Kabayan Inibaloi (Roberta Ruffolo, pers.comm.)
Maon-an=ko=y aso.
[+sttv,+lfct]
be seen=GEN.1S=DET dog
‘The dog was seen by me.’ / ‘I happened to see the dog.’
4. Structure of noun phrases
4.1 Word order
Noun phrases in Philippine languages are typically strongly right branching, with
heads preceding modifiers. The only noun phrase constituent commonly appearing
before the head noun is a Determiner. 10 Genitively marked possessive noun phrases
always follow their head nouns, as do all relative clauses and other modifying elements.
The great majority of Philippine languages do not have a distinctive form class of
9 The third person singular Nominative pronoun here is zero.
10 The classification of these forms as Determiners has recently been argued against in Reid
(2002), where evidence is presented that at least some of these forms are better analyzed as a
type of noun that is the head of its construction and requires a following predicate, either noun
or verb, as its complement.