Tagalog (Austronesian)

Differential effects of agency, animacy, and syntactic prominence on production and comprehension: Evidence from a verb-initial language.

“…While agents and pivots were the most frequently mentioned elements in the first and second positions, the patient also received numerous mentions in either the first or second position, in each of the nonpatient voices. It can be argued that the patient element also carries some degree of prominence, albeit less than that of agents and pivots, as one of the core arguments (Himmelmann, 2005; Riesberg, 2014). The status of an element as either core or oblique reflects grammatical relations as well.…”

“…Researchers disagree on what the preferred word order pattern is, and there is particular debate about how the most prominent elements, that is, the agents and pivots, are ordered in the sentence, especially for the AV. Some scholars describe an agent-first preference in Tagalog (Chen, 2017; Manueli, 2010; Schachter, 2015), while others describe a pivot-last tendency (Himmelmann, 2005). In a recent study, Riesberg et al (2019) describe word order patterns for Tagalog and several similar languages.…”

“…These four voice alternations can be considered as thematic paraphrases of each other, although there are descriptions of semantic differences between these patterns, such as differences in the definiteness or specificity of the patient argument (Collins, 2017; Himmelmann, 2005; Rackowski, 2002). Some scholars have also suggested that the choice of voice can be dependent on the information structure and referential properties of the sentential arguments, as well as verb semantics and event structure (Latrouite, 2011; Latrouite & Riester, 2018; Nolasco, 2005).…”

“…A signature feature of the Tagalog voice system is the presence of voice morphology on the verb to select one of the nominal elements as syntactically prominent, that is, as what is referred to as the pivot in several influential sources (Foley, 1998; Himmelmann, 2005; Riesberg, 2014). Also referred to in the literature as the focused element , privileged syntactic argument , trigger , nominative , absolutive , or subject (albeit more controversially), the pivot is the element that is eligible for a variety of syntactic operations such as relativization (Aldridge, 2004; Chen & McDonnell, 2019; Kroeger, 1993; Latrouite, 2011; Rackowski, 2002; Rackowski & Richards, 2005; Schachter, 1976).…”

Examining voice choice in Tagalog: A corpus of web-based Tagalog

“…That is, higher ranked semantic roles tend to be more referentially prominent (Haspelmath 2021) and when they are not, languages may have ways of coding this less expected mapping. For example, when a patient (Undergoer) is high on the animacy or definiteness hierarchy, it is often marked or specially coded (Haspelmath 2021) to indicate an atypical mapping between role and referential prominence Arguments preceded by the marker ang are analyzed as the PSA since it is the argument that "agrees" with the verb's morphology and is the target of a range of syntactic operations (Himmelmann 2008;Shibatani 1991;Kroeger 1993;Schachter, 1976;1995). Arguments that are preceded by ng (and potentially sa, see Latrouite 2011) are understood as core, but nonprivileged syntactic arguments (NPSA).…”