A GRAMMATICAL SKETCH OF MASBATENYO Michael Wilson I. Rosero 2 7- 3 3 Irma U. Peneyra, Ph.D Advisor A thesis su.mitted in partial fulfillment of the re1uirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics Department of Linguistics University of the Philippines Diliman, 3ue4on City 11 1 March 2 11 6Revised 7une 2 189 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following people: M mentors: m advisor, Prof. Irma Pene ra. (ou have been ver patient. Thanks for alwa s believing in me. And Prof. Rick Nolasco, for all the wonderful lectures and ver linguistic discussions ou shared with me. This ,masterpiece- is for the two of ou. Prof. Rest Cena, for his invaluable comments and suggestions on m thesis, Mr. Paul /ulian Santiago, for entertaining conversations about love and linguistics and Mr. Marfeal Santiago, for introducing me to the world of discourse and functional linguistics. 0acult and members of the 1P Department of Linguistics and all m other professors who have passionatel shared their knowledge and e2periences to me. M famil and relatives for the help and understanding the have rendered me to be able to accomplish this paper. Thank ou for our never3ending support. M main informants: Auntie Charit, Lola Dandit, Mama Nining, and other countless Masbaten os who have been m inspiration in doing this thesis. 1ncle Nono for letting me borrow our laptop while I was doing m research. M first ever Linguistics 130 class who helped me 7umpstart the studies on Masbaten o. Special mention to Katrina 8ipolito and Giggle 9rillante for their efforts and dedication that led to the creation of Masbaten o Corpus. M coffee mates, I7i Imperial, A a Tantiangco, Pete Sengson, Case Giron with whom I had interesting, thought3provoking and ,progressive- conservations on language and linguistics and its practical applications to the societ . The 1P Samahang Linggwistika, who were m first linguistic companions and who taught me the value of linguistics. Members of 1P La ap :La apeeps) who have boldl accepted m invitation and the challenge of advancing a multilingual and culturall relevant education which I believe is the ultimate task of being a linguist who studies language. Danielle Tadena, /eva delos Re es, Abbi Lavina, Leizl Ocampo and all the Rick babies and survivors. M friends, Empor :N4) blockmates, and fellow Linguistics ma7ors. Maraming salamat> Lipad tungo sa karunungan> i A9STRACT Masbaten o :?msb]) is a member of Central Philippines and of the 9isa an subgroup of the Austronesian famil of languages. It is spoken in the islands of Masbate and some parts of Sorsogon. According to the latest report Ethnologue :2009) on the languages of the world, it has 3C0, 000 speakers as of 2002 :SIL, 2002) with C0, 000 who speak it as first language. About 2C0,000 speakers use it as their second language. There are but a few researches and studies that have been done on Masbaten o language. 1nlike its neighboring languages, Masbaten o is not a well3researched area in the field of linguistics. 0or man ears, the Masbaten o language has onl been an oral language despite the size of the population and the outstanding academic achievements of the speakers. This paper is another attempt to document the language. It is a grammatical sketch of Masbaten o language, a short description of the most salient points of the grammar of the language. It aims to describe and establish the Masbaten o grammar. This is also to further support the e2istence of Masbaten o as a language, and not merel as a dialect of one of the surrounding ma7or language groups in the Disa an area. This paper presents the basic phonological, morphological and s ntactic structures of the language based on both written and actual spoken language following the framework of the discourse3functional grammar. It is divided into five chapters. The first chapter discusses the general information about the Masbaten o language such as the location of Masbate province, the short histor , the varieties of the language spoken in Masbate area and the previous studies done on the language. This chapter also includes the discussion of the theoretical approaches, the methodolog of the stud and the review of the previous studies done on the language. The second chapter discusses the phonolog section. This part presents the phonemic inventor of the language, the phonotactic constraints and the morphophonemic changes in the language. 9oth articulator and acoustic anal ses of the phonolog of the language will be presented. The third chapter focuses on the morphos nta2 of the language. This includes the discussion of the structural and distributional properties of word classes and presents the morphological and s ntactic evidences, as well as the discourse basis for such classifications. It also deals with the debated issues on Philippine morphos nta2 such pre3 categorialit and inherent argument structure, the la ered structure h pothesis, transitivit and ergativit and makes use of the Masbaten o language to provide support for such claims. ii The fourth chapter describes the clause structure and grammatical patterns of unmarked and pragmaticall marked constructions in Masbaten o. It also e2plores the notion of intonation units which are found to have some correlation to grammatical structures of the language. The fifth chapter concludes this stud . This stud will also describe the Masbaten o language patterned to some recent research findings on Philippine language that constitute a ver important role in the description of Masbaten o grammar. iii LIST O0 0IG1RES Linguistics Map of Southern Philippines with Masbaten o highlighted EEEEEE. 1 Map of the Philippines with Masbate highlighted EEEEEEEEEEEEE....E 2 The subgrouping of Austronesian language famil :Lobel, 2002)EEEEEEEEE..7 Masbaten o and the 9isa an subgroup of languages :Lobel, 2002)EEEE...EEEE 7 Masbaten o and other languages spoken in Masbate Islands EEEEE...EEEEE 8 The dialects of Masbaten o and the areas where the are spoken EE...EEEEEE 9 Screen shot of Goldwave vC.C7 EEEEEEEEEEEEEE..EEEEEEEE. 16 Screen shot of Praat programE........................................................................................... 16 Screen shot of a Plot0ormants output showing the raw measurements and the plotted values of Masbaten o vowelE..EEE..EEEEEEEEEEEE.. 17 01 and 02 formant freIuencies in vowels EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.... 22 Dowels and their formant freIuencies as seen in the spectrogram EEEEEEEEEE... 22 The plotted values of the formant freIuencies for each vowel in Masbaten o. EEE.. 23 The mean values of the formant freIuencies of Masbaten o phonemes EEEE..E... 24 Screenshot of the Praat Edit window showing the glottal stop in ?baɁ.baɁ] EEEEE 32 Screenshot of segment :0.0036.26s) of Padera Pear stor EEEEEEEEEEEEE 93 Screenshot of segment :10.42317.07s) of Padera Pear stor EEEEEEEEEEEEE..... 94 Screenshot of segment :3.93317.C7s) of Tabigue J Self3introduction EEEEEE..E 9C Screenshot of Padera J Pear Stor annotation showing changes in pitch EEEEE... 9C Screenshot of Padera J Pear Stor illustrating final element lengthening EEEEEEEEE 96 Intonation 1nit t pes in Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. 96 iv LIST O0 TA9LES Masbaten o vowel chart EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. 21 Mean Dalues in 8ertz of the 01 and 02 for each Masbaten o vowel EEEEEE...… 23 The consonant chart of Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE 24 Duration, Pitch, Intensit Measurements of Stressed and 1nstressed S llables EEE.. 26 Consonant clusters in Masbaten o :adapted from Wolfenden, 2001) EEEEEE..E 27 Consonants in initial, medial and final positions in Masbaten o EEEEEEEE.E 28 Masbaten o sound and their orthographic representation EEEEEEEEEE..E 31 Masbaten o eIuivalents of borrowed consonants EEEEEEEEEEEEE.EE 34 Nominalization morphemes EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE 41 Nominalizing voice affi2 EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..... 42 Proposed Transitivit Parameters for Philippine Languages :Nolasco, 2003) EEE..EC2 Doice Affi2es of Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... C0 Aspectual forms of transitive and intransitive verbs EEEEEEEEEEEE.EE CC Summar of Mode in Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.. 62 Doice affi2es deriving stative verbs EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE 6C Masbaten o pronominal forms EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...E 69 Demonstrative pronouns in Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.. 71 Case determiners in Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.E... 74 Numeral e2pressions EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..EE. 76 Clitic placement and distribution in Masbaten o :Lee, 2006).......EEEEEEEE... 79 Order of clitic particles EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... 82 Semantic Classification of Subordinating Con7unctions EEEEEEEEEEE...E 8C 0reIuenc of I1 t pes in Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE 97 0reIuenc of non3clausal I1s in Masbaten o EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.... 99 A freIuenc count of transitive and intransitive I1s EEEEEEEEEEEEE.... 101 v LIST O0 A99REDIATIONS A agent or source of action A9S absolutive AGENT semantic agent APT aptative 9EN beneficiar /recipient CA1S causative CON/ con7unction COMPR comparative C1D1 first s llable reduplication DIST distal DISTR distributive ERG ergative 0OC focus GEN genitive INCP inceptive future IND indicative INTR intransitive affi2 INTSD intensive IMP imperative IP0D imperfective LKR linker LOC locative MED medial MOD modifier MODE mode NEG negator NE1T neutral tense3aspect NOM nominalization NONSPEC non3specific N1M numeral O patient or most affected entit O9L obliIue PAT semantic patient P0D perfective PL plural vi POSS possessive PR personal PROL pro2imal PRSP prospective PRT particle MW Iuestion word RED reduplication