Grammar and discourse features of contemporary Pangasinan

This study describes the morphological and syntactic structures of Pangasinan, a language with a VSO construction, using the ergative-absolutive interpretation. It also characterizes this languages discourse features. Chapter 2 discusses the verbal and non-verbal clauses, while Chapter 3 delves into the important functions of Pangasinan articles of connecting words together and introducing elements in an utterance. Included in the discussion are Pangasinan linkers. Pangasinan employs an elaborate affixation process by which nouns (Chapter 4), adjectives (Chapter 6), and verbs (Chapter 8) can be derived. This affixation process is observed to be a pervasive phenomenon in this language resulting in a more vibrant language. Also investigated is the reduplication process which is employed to generate nominals and indicate their plurality, as well as to show the frequentative mode of verbs. One interesting phenomenon that has been uncovered in this study is that of the lazy nouns which may not inflect itself but relies on other devices such as demonstrative pronominals or nominal markers. Chapter 5 discusses the grammatical functions of Pangasinan pronominals: absolutives, ergatives, genitives, and obliques. It also categorizes Pangasinan demonstratives into person oriented demonstratives, locative demonstratives and demonstratives that denote similarity. Chapter 7 discusses how Pangasinan adverbs modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. It elucidates on the positions these adverbs assume in an utterance. When they modify verbs, they generally are in postverbal positions. When they modify adjectives and other adverbs, they are positioned usually before their headwords. Chapter 9 discusses the different ways by which the Pangasinan speaker elicits or solicits information like employing interrogative demonstratives, and whquestions, or resorting to rhetorical devices like amo, ta, man, odino, anto, andita, awa, and kasi. Chapter 10 explores the versatility of affixes in producing Pangasinan numerals, as well as the use of endemic Pangasinan terms, body part terms, and commercial containers to reflect frequency of action, clock time, and mensural terms. Chapter 11 explores the different ways by which actions of verbs, items, existentials, and responses to questions are negated. Chapter 12 categorizes the functions of Pangasinan discourse markers as interactional, textual, contextual and pragmatic, text-level semantic and logical relations, thematic, and normative. Chapter 13 explores the information structure of Pangasinan which shows that speakers follow the VSO pattern. On occasions, though, they move linguistic elements to the predicate position through the process of fronting, or use lexical markers to highlight elements. Chapter 14 provides formulaic utterances which may be useful to learners of Pangasinan. Finally, Chapter 15 provides a summary of the grammar and discourse features of Pangasinan, pedagogical implications of the study, and recommendations for future research