Who’s Missing in the Group? Argument Sharing in Core Cosubordinate Construction in Filipino

Who’s Missing in the Group? Argument Sharing in Core Cosubordinate Construction in Filipino* Aquiles P. Bazar III De La Salle University 2401 Taft Avenue, Manila, Philippines 1004 bazara@dlsu.edu.ph Abstract. This paper examines the relationship between two important arguments in core cosubordinate construction in Filipino: namely, controller found in the matrix core and the missing argument (controllee) in the linked core using the framework Role and Reference Grammar of Van Valin (2005). This paper has proved that there is really an argument sharing between two cores and each core plays a crucial role in the syntactic development of cosubordinate clauses. The first core assigns the juncture levels and nexus of relations of the units involved, whereas the second core determines the syntactic structure of the clause. The researcher also found out that regardless of the number of arguments found in the linked core, the matrix core argument which is also the controller is the same with the missing actor argument from the linked core. Keywords: cosubordination, arguments, control construction, nexus, core. 1. Introduction Cosubordination is defined as one type of nexus relation in which units of equivalent sizes are strung together in a coordinate-like relation with no marker of syntactic dependency is found between and among units (Olson, 1981). These units share some grammatical categories such as arguments, aspects, negation, and other operators. Argument sharing is a process in which one argument in the matrix core is the same with another argument found from the linked core. However, the problem lies in the syntactic representation of a cosubordinate clause in which there is a missing argument from the linked core. That seems to be a violation of a theory known as Completeness Constraint as it states that all arguments overtly expressed in the semantic representation of a clause must be realised in the syntax (Van Valin, 2005). Before we move on to our discussion of argument sharing, let us first clarify some terms in the literature. Control construction, as one theory applied in analysing argument sharing in cosubordination, refers to how the controller of the missing NP in the linked core is to be determined (Van Valin, 2005). In an ergative language like Filipino, subject control and object control cannot be used, for these terms will lead to some problems. Thus, non-subject actor, controller, or syntactic pivot will be used to avoid confusion. In sentence (1), the single argument of the matrix core realised by ko ‘I’ is in ergative case functioning as a non-subject actor in the construction and cannot be called either subject or object controller. The semantic role of the argument ko ‘I’ is assigned by its nucleus pinilit ‘tried’, a patient verb. The argument in the linked core, on the other hand, is missing but although this argument is not overtly expressed in the syntax, it is clear that this argument is the same with the syntactic argument in the matrix core making this non-subject actor the controller by default. * Copyright 2008 - Aquiles P. Bazar …

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