A Brief Syntactic Typology of Philippine Languages - Academia Sinica

Lawrence A. Reid and Hsiu-chuan Liao
simple verbal clauses. Later sections will deal with the detailed description of each of
these types, and of constructions requiring dependent verbal clauses.
2.3.1 Intransitive constructions
A verb which expects only a single nominal complement (i.e., one that can only be
followed by a single nominal argument) is intransitive, and the construction of which it is
apart is therefore intransitive. Depending on the form of the verb, this single complement
is interpreted as carrying either the actor macrorole in dynamic structures (§3.3.1) or the
undergoer macrorole in stative structures (§3.3.2). This complement is typically 8 the
Nominative complement of the construction (whether it is morphologically marked as
such or is morphologically unmarked). It should be noted that although a verb which
expects only a single complement is intransitive, the number of complements that a
construction has does not determine its transitivity. It is the type of the complements
that a verb takes that determines its transitivity, not their number. There are many
‘meteorological’ verbs, such as ‘rain’, etc., that are intransitive but do not allow any
explicit nominal complement, while there are other verbs that expect more than one
complement which may also be intransitive, as discussed in §2.3.1.2.
2.3.1.1 Single complement intransitive clauses
The typical word order of these constructions, as noted above, requires the
Nominative complement to follow the predicate, regardless of whether or not it is a
pronoun or a full noun phrase.
8 There are some languages such as Botolan Sambal, Ivatan, and Tagalog which allow what
seem to be intransitive constructions in that they only expect a single nominal complement, but
that complement is morphologically marked as Genitive, not Nominative. These are interpreted
as exclamations; e.g.:
Botolan Sambal (Antworth 1979:50)
Pagkayaman ni Juan!
wealthy GEN Juan
‘How wealthy Juan is!’
Ivatan (Reid 1966:58)
Japia=na no tao!
good=GEN.3S GEN man
‘How good the man is!’
Tagalog (Schachter and Otanes 1972:280)
Kaganda ng dalaga!
beautiful GEN girl
‘How beautiful the girl is!’
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