An-lang Digest, Vol 98, Issue 8

[Scott Robertson]

Chris,

Begun/not begun is the same thing as realis/irrealis in Cebuano.  Prof. 
Wolfe's books call them real/unreal.  Cebuano has a third time 
mode--infinitive, or tenseless or abstract or whatever you want to call 
it.  I like to call it surrealis to make it fit with realis/irrealis but 
no one else will want to use that.

I found the concept of relative tense particularly useful for Cebuano 
time modes, since there is no distinction made between present and past 
time sense provided by the realis affix.  Context such as time words or 
cause/effect words provides the distinction.  Then the irrealis is often 
used when there is a past or present time sense in more formal grammar, 
though speakers of Visayan seem to be getting away from that and using a 
redundant realis affix when a time word in the context has already 
marked the sentence as having a past time sense.

Luther

> I have a question on the terminology. I first encountered the "Begun/Not
> Begun" distinction a few years ago in the context of a Cebuano grammar
> sketch written by UP Diliman linguist Jessie Grace Rubrico (and then later
> on, I saw the terminology in Reid 1992).  But I think this may be actually
> irrealis/realis mood. What's your (and others') take on this?
>
> As far as the ambiguity of Tagalog -um- is concerned.  Until the 20th
> century, Tagalog had the infix -ungm- which was used for the aspects under
> the realis mood, imperfective&  perfective. It's a reflex of
> Proto-Austronesian *-umin- and there are reflexes of this in other
> Philippine languages. My recently-completed undergrad thesis focuses on
> this.
>
> --Chris Sundita
>
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:55 PM, Resty Cena<restycena at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>
> paradigm is irregular,all other affix voice paradigms are regular and
>> comparable. The irregularity ofthe -um-affix stems from the fact that the
>> aspect Begun uses it as well(bumili, bumibili), rather than switching to an
>> n variant, theway the infinitive of mag-verbs do it, for example, magbili
>> becomes nagbiliand nagbibili. But then, -um-cannot use -in- to express
>> Begun, for that would be the same form asthe Begun aspects of a patient
>> verb. It could have invented *-un-, todistinguish it from -in-, but, I
>> guess, it must be thinking, ?Well, Ialready have the -um- form, so I?ll just
>> use it rather than inventanother infix. That should confuse linguists.?

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