Ay-Inversion in Tagalog: Information Structure and Morphosyntax of an Austronesian Language: 9 (Dissertations in Language and Cognition) - Softcover

Nuhn; Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3110754983 ISBN 13: 9783110754988

Publisher: düsseldorf university press, 2021

Synopsis

Tagalog, an Austronesian language, is widely spoken and understood throughout the Philippine archipelago where it served as the basis for the national language Filipino. The language is often cited for its many unusual linguistic properties. Drawing on both spoken fieldwork data and written data from novels, this study investigates several phenomena at Tagalog’s interface of information structure and morphosyntax.

Aside from the default predicate-initial word order, the Tagalog language has several information-structurally marked constructions that allow other constituents to appear in the sentence initial position. One of these constructions is ay-inversion. Although it is often labeled a topic-marking construction, it is actually far more versatile. This book aims to explore some of its many facets.

The investigation of ay-inversion begins with a survey of its various uses that appear in the data, including some that have to date received very little if any attention in the literature, such as reversed ang-inversion, which combines two of the language’s inversion constructions. Selected observations are then modeled in Role and Reference Grammar and their implications for Tagalog syntax are explored. Finally, the role of ay-inversion in anaphora resolution is investigated and selected processes are modeled in a frame-based account.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Nuhn, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.

Edition details

• Publisher: düsseldorf university press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3110754983
• ISBN 13: 9783110754988
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 300