Nominal Marking, Linking, and Subordinating in Bolinao

Philippine Indigenous Languages Lecture Series (PILLS)
11 December 2023 | 2:00 PM | Livestreaming via Facebook

The last installment of PILLS for 2023 will feature MA Linguistics alumnus, John Venson Villareal. In his lecture, Villareal will discuss a pattern in Bolinao, a language spoken in the municipalities of Anda and Bolinao, Pangasinan.

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a pattern in Bolinao in which determiners mark constructions that are not lexically nouns such as complement clauses, relative clauses, infinitive phrases and genitive phrases. Following the previous analyses of these constructions in Tibeto-Burman languages, I argue that Bolinao determiners can also be used as linkers, complementizers, and relative clause markers. The variety of the functions of determiners are due to the inherent similarities of the constructions that they mark like complement and relative clauses. Finally, I speculate on the emergence of the linking use of the determiner in Bolinao.