Earlier this summer, graduate student Gérard Avelino (3rd year) gave a presentation at the 14th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL 14) at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. His talk was titled “T’boli Benefactive and Instrumental Applicatives.” A short abstract of his work is below:
This paper examines applicatives in Tboli, a Philippine language spoken on Mindanao. Using data from Porter (1977), Porter and Hale (1977), and Forsberg (1992), I propose that Tboli makes use of applicatives for both benefactives and instrumentals. However, unlike prototypical Philippine-type voice languages, Tboli has strict word order and no explicit case marking. My analysis will show that despite covert morphology, Tboli still exhibits Philippine-type voice. An analysis of both types of applicatives as low applicatives will account for Tboli’s word order, specificity, and voice marking, ultimately showing that pivothood is not tied to Case, clause structure, or specificity.
Gérard also gave a poster presentation, “Tagalog particle sana: modality at the syntax-semantics interface,” at the 4th Crete Summer School of Linguistics (CreteLing 2022) in Rethymno, Greece. Check out his poster below (click through for full size):
