[An-lang] aspect and agreement in tagalog: recent perfective morpheme

[Raph Mercado]

apologies if you've already seen this on linguistlist....

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ciao linguists!

i'm currently working on tagalog verbal morphology and i'm looking
specifically at the recent perfective morpheme.  this morpheme is
peculiar because, unlike the other aspectual morphemes in the
language, the RP morpheme prevents agreement morphology from appearing
on the verb and prevents any of the DP arguments in the sentence from
being marked as subject.  here are examples:

(1)  Magluluto    ang bata  ng manok.
     cook.at.cont sbj child cs chicken
     'The child will cook a chicken.'

(2)  Lulutuin    ng bata  ang manok.
     buy.tt.cont cs child sbj chicken
     'The child will cook the chicken.'

(3)  Kaluluto    ng bata  ng manok.
     buy.rec-prf cs child cs chicken
     'The child has just cooked a chicken.'

in (1) and (2), the verbs are in the contemplated aspect, while in
(3), the verb is inflected for the recent perfective.  in (1),
agreement is marked by the mag- prefix (agent-topic) and 'bata' is
marked as subject (the 'ang' particle).  in (2), agreement is marked
by the --in suffix (theme topic) and 'manok' is marked as subject.
in (3), there is no agreement morphology--the recent perfective is
marked by ka + reduplication--and none of the DPs in the sentence is
marked with the 'ang' subject particle.  both are marked with default
case.

now, i would like to know if anyone can suggest any literature in
which it has been proposed that verbs can agree with the aspect in the
sentence.  in other words, the morphology on the verb does not mark
agreement with any DP in the sentence but marks agreement with the
aspect.  (the aspectual morpheme and the 'aspectual agreement'
morpheme are different morphemes).

i would also be grateful to anyone who can point me to literature that
talks about the recent perfective morpheme in tagalog and related
languages and/or that discusses other phenomena in other languages in
which the appearance of a particular aspectual morpheme blocks
verb-subject agreement.

i am willing to post a summary for those interested.

thanks in advance!

raphael mercado
PhD candidate
mcgill university
montreal, canada


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