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

[John Myhill]

The data you present here remind me of the `Perfect' in Georgian,
which involves not only verbal morphology but also putting the
logical subject in the Dative and cancelling normal subject/verb
agreement. This construction also has evidential-type meaning.

John Myhill








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