Nouns (Pangngalan)
While Tagalog nouns are not inflected, they are usually preceded by case-marking particles. These follow an Austronesian alignment (also known as a 'trigger' system) which is unique to the Philippines and neighboring islands. There are three basic cases: direct (or absolutive, often inaccurately labeled the nominative), indirect (which may function as an ergative, accusative, or genitive), and oblique.
The direct case is used for intransitive clauses. In the default grammatical voice of Tagalog, the direct marks the patient (direct object) and the indirect marks the agent (corresponding to the subject in English). In the more marked voice the reverse occurs, with the direct marking the agent and the indirect marking the patient. Because the base form of the clause is superficially similar to the passive voice in English, this has led to a misconception that Tagalog is spoken primarily in the passive voice. It is also superficially similar to ergative languages such as those of Australia, so Tagalog has also been analyzed as an ergative language. However, the English passive clause is intransitive, and likewise in ergative languages one of the voices forms an intransitive clause, whereas in Tagalog both voices are transitive, and so align well neither with nominative–accusative languages such as English nor with ergative languages.
One of the functions of voice in Tagalog is to code definiteness, analogous to the difference between "a" and "the" in English. When the patient is marked with the direct case particle, it is generally definite ("the"), whereas when it is marked with the indirect case it is generally indefinite ("a").
The oblique particle, and the locative derived from it, are similar to prepositions in English, marking things such as location and direction.
The case particles fall into two classes: one used with names of people (proper) and one for everything else (common).
The common ergative marker is spelled ng but pronounced . Mgá, pronounced, marks the common plural.
Read more about this topic: Tagalog Grammar
Famous quotes containing the word nouns:
“Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)