Tagalog is an Austronesian language, a language family comprising languages spoken in the Malay Peninsula, in South East Asia, in Taiwan, in the islands of the Pacific Ocean and in Magadascar.
Agglutination
Tagalog, like most Austronesian languages, is an agglutinative language.
An agglutinative language is characterized by words that are made up of different morphems (morpema in Tagalog), a morphem being the smallest part of a word having a meaning of its own (like, for example, the English word doable: if I separate the two morphems, do and able each of them has a meaning of its own and can stand on its own)
Agglutination in Tagalog: Root Words and Affixes
Generally words in Tagalog are formed by combining a "salitang ugat" or "root word" with one or more "panlapi" or affixes.
There are three types of affixes in Tagalog:
Unlapi or prefix
Gitlapi or infix
Hulapi or suffix
"Unlapi" or "Prefix"
For example, I could combine the "root word" talino, which conveys the idea of "intelligence", with the affix ma to form the adjective ("pang-uri") matalino (intelligent).
In this case the "affix" or "panlapi" is called "prefix" or "unlapi", because it occurs before the "root word"
"Prefixes" can also be used to form verbs, like, for example, the verb magbasa (to read) and nouns like inapo or katrabaho, kaibigan etc.
"Gitlapi" or "Infix"
The "gitlapi" is an affix that goes in between the root word.
A typical example is the verb "kumain" (to eat), where the "um" affix goes between the first consonant and the first vowel of the root word "kain"
"Hulapi" or "Suffix"
The "hulapi" occurs at the end of the root word. A typical example are the -in verbs like "basahin" (to read) or such nouns as "aklatan" (library).
No comments:
Post a Comment