So every word has a form, which provides information about its pronunciation and which can be represented in various ways. Words can be represented phonemically, by providing a single symbol for each distinctive sound in the language. They can also be represented phonetically, by providing a symbol for the actual sounds that a person uses in pronouncing his words. They can also be represented by arbitrary conventions which may or may not actually correspond to a phonemic or a phonetic representation, but which have social acceptance. (See the section on Orthographies for an explanation of the Local and Generic ways of representing the pronunciation of a Bontok word.)
Every word also has a meaning, commonly referred to as the definition of that word. Presumably the meaning of a form is stored in the speaker's head as a set of semantic features. Some of these semantic features serve to classify words into semantic domains, such as 'weapon','basket','insect','plant', etc. This dictionary provides a rough classification of many nouns according to their semantic domain. Meaning, like form, can also be represented in many ways. In this dictionary, the meaning is represented in an English translation, although it would be possible to represent the meaning also in Bontok, or in any other language. There are no meaningless 'empty' words in any language, and none will be found in this dictionary.
Every word also has a distribution. This latter information is of a variety of types, although only a limited set can be included in the dictionary. The first specifies the grammatical category, or Word Class, that the form belongs to. Word Classes divide the words in a language into sets which potentially have the same syntactic distribution, e.g., Verbs, Nouns, Determiners, Adverbs, etc. Each word class is further subcategorized by sets of binary features, which specify the kind of distribution that the words in that class share. Some of these features, such as [trans] 'transitive' and [xlry ] 'auxiliary' subcategorize verbs, while others, such as [prnn] 'pronoun' and [dmns] 'demonstrative' subcategorize nouns. Some nouns may also carry features which specify their case form, that is whether they are Nominative, Genitive, or Locative, for example. Other words may also carry features which specify the case relation of nouns, that is whether they are the Agent, or the Patient of a sentence, or have some other case relation. Other kinds of syntactic information that are carried by words include what kinds of dependents that that word may require or accept, and what relative order that the word and its dependents have relative to one another.
All of this information would be required in a fully specified account of the lexicon of a language. However only a very limited subset of the information is included in this dictionary.
Ergativity. Bontok, like probably all other Philippine languages is an ergative language. This means that the Nominative noun phrase (sometimes referred to as the 'grammatical subject' in a sentence) must always express the Patient case relation. Thus a transitive verb with two noun phrase complements, one of which expresses the Agent (actor), and the other expressing the Patient, requires the latter phrase to be marked as the grammatical subject of the sentence, in the same way as the noun phrase which is the single complement of a one-place intransitive verb. The Agent of a transitive verb is expressed by a Genitive noun phrase. People who are familiar with other descriptions of Philippine languages may wonder how this dictionary deals with the 'focus system' and may note that there are no 'affixes' cited in the dictionary. The following two paragraphs discuss these issues.
Focus? Bontok, also like many other Philippine languages, has a rich set of derivationally related verbs. This system, in older descriptions of Philippine languages, has been referred to as the 'focus system'. This dictionary treats all so-called 'actor focus' verbs as intransitive verbs. It treats all 'non-actor focus' verbs as transitive verbs, distinguished not by the case of the grammatical subject, which in all cases is Patient, but by the presence of grammatical features (such as [lfct] 'locative effect' or [ifct] 'instrumental effect) on the verb. Since an ergative language is very different in structure from an accusative language like English, it is sometimes difficult to provide clear definitions of transitive verbs. Each definition of a transitive verb therefore includes a noun followed by the notation (PAT). In the English definition such nouns are usually the grammatical object of the verb in the definition, but the notation (PAT) signifies that that word would be the Patient of the verb being defined, and would therefore be the grammatical subject of that verb.
Affixes? This dictionary differs from other dictionaries of Philippine languages (and from my original Bontok-English Dictionary) by not talking about affixes, that is prefixes, suffixes, or infixes. The reason is that the linguistic theory which is used in the development of this dictionary, a theory called Lexicase Dependency Grammar, operates on the assumption that words are unanalyzable units. Words do not have any internal morpheme boundaries and therefore have no internal structure. It is true however that native speakers are aware of the patterns of similarity that exist between sets of derivationally related words and can consciously form new words by analogy with those patterns. These ways of forming words in a language are known as Word Formation Strategies. A grammar of the language of Bontok, for example, would include a large number of such analogically-based strategies. One such strategy would enable a child to form an intransitive verb with 'perfective aspect', from the corresponding 'imperfective aspect' form of that verb by analogy with other verbs it had learned that shared the same syntactic features. For example, an imperfective intransitive verb (V, [-trns], [-prfc]) , such as <i>in-emes</i> 'bathe' begins with the sounds [<i>in</i>…. By replacing that sequence with the sounds [<i>nin</i>…, which occur at the beginning of perfective intransitive verbs, the derivationally related word <i>nin-emes</i> 'bathed' is formed, which in addition to the feature [-trns] 'intransitive', carries instead the feature [+prfc].
Words and Sort Forms. Because words do not have 'affixes', there are no such things as 'roots', or 'stems', except as these occur as regular words in the language with their own meaning and word class. This poses a dilemma for the dictionary maker who would like to make sure that all words that appear to be derivationally related appear together in the dictionary, since their meanings are also related. Unless there is an underived 'root' word in the language, such as the noun <i>emes</i> 'the act of bathing', under which the two words mentioned in the previous paragraph can be cited, <i>in-emes</i> 'bathe' would occur in the dictionary under the letter <i>I</i>, while <i>nin-emes</i> 'bathed' would occur under the letter <i>N</i>. For many sets of derivationally related verbs, the so-called 'root' form has never been heard by me, and may not be a regular word in the language. For these verbs, in order to keep them sorted together in the dictionary, I have postulated a Sort Form. It must be emphasized that until these are verified to be real words in the language with their own meaning and distribution, these are only the constructs of a linguist for the practical purpose of keeping derivationally and semantically similar words together in the dictionary. In this dictionary, real words in the language have the notation W in front of them and have an orange background. Sort forms have the notation S in front of them and have a green background. They only have a form and can therefore be given a pronunciation, but they themselves do not have any meaning, nor are they the member of any word class.
Word Classes
((Preliminary, Unfinished))
This dictionary assumes only eight word classes or parts-of-speech in Bontok. These are the building blocks of the syntax of the language and are therefore definable only by syntactic criteria. They include seven of the eight word classes claimed by Lexicase Dependency Grammar to be the maximum number that need to be distinguished in a language to provide a general, but concise, statement of the grammar. These seven classes are Noun (N), Verb (V), Adverb (Adv), Determiner (Det), Preposition (P), Conjunction (Cnjc), and Sentence Particle (Spart). Each of these classes is subdivided by sets of binary features which will be described below. The one word class needed in descriptions of many languages, but not needed in Bontok (nor in many other Philippine and Southeast Asian languages) is Adjective. Words which have traditionally been categorized as Adjectives, are a subset of non-finite, intransitive verbs in Bontok. This dictionary assumes one word class that has not generally been found in Lexicase descriptions of other languages. That class is Exclamation (Excl).
The following sections describe the preliminary subcategorization of each of the word classes. To find examples of any of these features, go to the Word Class Search Page, enter the feature you would like to see examples of.
Noun
All nouns in Bontok occur as heads of noun phrases, and are always assigned one of the case forms, Predicative (Prd), Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen) or Locative (Loc), by their position in relation to other words in the sentence, and/or by their form. They carry one of the features [-prnn] or [+prnn].
- [prnn] pronoun. Nouns marked with the feature [-prnn] are non-pronominal. Those marked with the feature [+prnn] are pronominal. Pronominal nouns are either [-dmns] or [+dmns].
- [dmns] demonstrative. Pronouns marked with the feature [-dmns] are personal pronouns. Those marked with the feature [+dmns] are demonstrative pronouns.
Non-pronominal nouns are either [-prsn] or [+prsn].
- [prsn] person. Nouns marked with the feature [-prsn] are common nouns. They are never preceded by the person marking determiner <i>si</i>. They are commonly preceded by the determiner <i>nan</i>, or by one of the prepositions. In some contexts, such as in the Predicate position of a sentence they need not be preceded by any determiner.
Nouns marked with the feature [+prsn] are personal nouns. These are usually the names of people, and are preceded by the person marking determiner <i>si</i> when in the Predicative or Nominative case. They are not preceded by a determiner when in the Genitive or Locative case. Both personal and common nouns may be marked as either [-dmns] or [+dmns]. Demonstrative personal nouns are preceded by <i>si</i>, and refer to 'this person', 'that person', etc. Demonstrative common nouns are preceded by <i>nan</i>, and refer to 'this thing', 'that thing', etc. Non-demonstrative personal nouns are either [-prpr] or [+prpr].
- [prpr] proper. Personal nouns marked with the feature [-prpr] are kinship terms of address, Personal nouns marked with the feature [+prpr] are usually people's names. They have unique reference, and may not be followed by a dependent noun phrase.
TO BE CONTINUED!!
- Noun Features
?pssr requires a possessor
addr addressee
crdn cardinal
dmns demonstrative
dstr distributive
kins kinship
lctn location
msre measure
nmrl numeral
ordn ordinal
plrl plural
prnn pronoun
prpr proper
prsn person
prsn personal
remt remote
socl social
spkr speaker
temp temporal
unit unit
- Verb Features
adjc adjectival
apsv antipassive
aptt aptative
bfct benefactive
bfct benefactive
caus causative
cllc collectable
cntr centrifugal
dstr distributive
fint finite
ifct instrumental effect
lfct locative effect
motn motion
mprt imperative
ncpn incipient
part partitive
prfc perfective
prtn pretense
rcnt recent
rcpr reciprocal
rflx reflexive
socl social
sttv stative
trns transitive
xlry auxiliary
xtns extension
- Adverb
- Determiner
- Preposition
- Conjunction
- Sentence Particle
- Exclamation