Gérard Avelino presented his work at 16-ICAL
(Gérard Avelino)
The 16th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (16-ICAL) was held in Manila, Philippines on 20-24 June 2024.
Gérard Avelino presented a talk based on his first qualifying paper, “A subjunctive for Tagalog? Optatives and the matrix infinitive”, below is the full abstract.
Non-embedded declarative clauses generally require finite verb forms. In Tagalog, however, monoclausal constructions like (1) are grammatical with a verb in the infinitive.
(1) Mag-luto sana siya ng lumpia.
AV-cook OPT 3SG.NOM GEN lumpia
‘I hope he cooks some lumpia.’
Sentences such as these, which Schachter & Otanes (1972) class as optative constructions, express a speaker’s wish for something to take place. These constructions use an infinitive verb, typically in combination with the enclitic particle sana, which expresses the speaker’s hopes; or, less commonly, with other enclitic particles that express uncertainty; or, infrequently, with no enclitic particle at all (Schachter & Otanes 1972).
I find that Tagalog optative constructions pattern with subjunctive moods in other languages in exhibiting three key semantic properties: focus sensitivity, gradability, and nonveridicality. Thus, even if Tagalog does not explicitly mark verbal mood with dedicated morphology, these optatives nonetheless select for verbs in the subjunctive.