Tagalog and Boreanesian "Articles" (was(2): Articles)

Barry Garcia wrote:

>In my conlang, there are no real articles. My conlang makes use of
>subject and object markers. For anyone who knows,  in Tagalog,  are
>there articles, or are there just subject and object markers? Hope
>this isnt too confusing! =).
My view is that the notion of subject/object cannot apply to a
language like Tagalog. The so called articles in Tagalog are really
markers of noun type (personal/proper or non-personal/common) and
case (Core, Oblique, or Genitive).

Since you know Tagalog beforehand, here is what I mean (view in a
monospace font like courier):


         CORE        OBLIQUE     GENITIVE
PROPER   <si>        <kay>       <ni>
COMMON   <ang>       <sa>        <ng>

So these are not articles in the European sense that directly
indicate anything about definiteness, but they are articles in other
pragmatic statuses - here, core articles normally indicate the focus
or topic.

In my conlang, Boreanesian, such articles are arranged quite
similarly to the Tagalog ones. However, the Boreanesian articles are
divided into three series of personal, animate, and inanimate,
rather than just a simply dichotomy of proper versus common.
Furthermore, they are cliticized to the noun (or predicate).
Examples of these in the singular are given below:


           CORE        OBLIQUE     GENITIVE
PERSONAL   <k- >       <qek- >     <nek- >
ANIMATE    <nh- >      <q- >       <n- >
INANIMATE  <th- >      <p- >       <t- >

The personal series are only used in formal contexts. For instance,
when addressing an elder.

Another difference is that while reference in Tagalog operates
pragmatically, reference is marked directly in Boreanesian nouns
(or predicates). They appear in a bound phase and an unbound phase.
The semantics of phase can be viewed schematical by the line
diagram, below:

BOUND     <-----[-----]----->
UNBOUND   <----------------->

Here, the line represents all the entities associated with the root
in the message world. Bound morphemes simply represents an
individuated entity (or grouped of entities) in the message world.
Thus, the semantic correlate of the bound phase is that of definite
nouns (or perfective predicates), and the semantic correlate of the
unbound phase is that of indefinite nouns (or imperfective
predicates).

The morphological shape of the unbound phase is the use of the schwa
vowel <e> as the rhyme for the article. E.g.:

<nh-e-menuwq> "a chicken" (or an entity associated with chickens)
<nh-e-qekayq> "a man" (or an entity associated with men)

The bound phase, on the other hand, can be further divided into a
centric and exocentric bound phases. This is indicated by the choice
of the article's rhyme. For centric it is <iyh> and for exocentric
it is <uwh>. E.g.:

<nh-iyh-menuwq> "the chicken (over here)
<nh-uwh-menuwq> "the chicken (over there)

Another difference from the Tagalog articles is that the Boreanesian
articles that are bound in phase can be used independently as
pronouns. This is not the case for Tagalog where pronouns are awhole
different class of words of their own. Again, Boreanesian samples in
the singular are given below (and, once again, to be viewed with a
monospace font like courier):

                CORE        OBLIQUE     GENITIVE
PERSONAL
   1st Person   <kiyh>      <qekiyh>    <nekiyh>
   2nd          <kuwh>      <qekuwh>    <nekuwh>
ANIMATE
   Centric      <nhiyh>     <qiyh>      <niyh>
   Exocentric   <nhuwh>     <quwh>      <nuwh>
INANIMATE
   Centric      <thiyh>     <piyh>      <tiyh>
   Exocentric   <thuwh>     <puwh>      <tuwh>


-kristian- 8)