Misconstruing Tagalog Prepositional Phrases As Subjacency Duplexes

Martin & Doran (2023: 42-3):

The same kind of problem arises in Tagalog and Korean. In Tagalog for example Receiver and Recipient participants are marked with sa. The projecting clause in “Nasaan kaya si Ningning?” sabi niya sa sarili. ‘“Where might Ningning be?” he said to himself.’ is analysed in (34) below – treating sa sarili ‘to himself’ as a subjacency duplex.

As introduced in (8) above, Tagalog uses the same pre-position sa to mark Direction. Outside of the semantics of the Processes involved (sabi ‘say’ vs lapit ‘approach’) there is nothing to distinguish the sa sarili ‘to himself’ and sa kanya ‘to him’ phrases. Accordingly a subjacency duplex analysis is proposed in (35).

The more general issue arising here is that in Tagalog there is arguably no need to recognise a distinction between nominal groups and prepositional phrases. Virtually all participants and circumstances are realised by subjacency duplexes with a #β clitic marking the role of an α nominal group in clause structure (Martin 1996b, 2004b).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, no argument has been proffered in support of applying a subjacency duplex analysis to this type of instance. From an SFL perspective, this is simply a Receiver realised by a prepositional phrase, as in the English gloss. That is, the authors have simply rebranded a prepositional phrase as a subjacency duplex.

Moreover, the interpretation of the prepositional phrase as a subjacency duplex misrepresents a unit with no logical structure as one with a logical structure. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 425):

But note that prepositional phrases are phrases, not groups; they have no logical structure as Head and Modifier, and cannot be reduced to a single element.

And again, as adpositions are not structure markers, they are irrelevant to the aims of the paper: a subjacency duplex analysis of structure markers.

[2] As the phrase 'outside of the semantics' demonstrates, the perspective taken here by the Martin & Doran is again the opposite of the perspective taken in SFL. That is, instead of identifying how meanings are expressed, the authors are concerned with identifying what expressions mean. From an SFL perspective, this instance is simply a Location realised by a prepositional phrase, as in the English gloss. Again, the authors have simply rebranded a prepositional phrase as a subjacency duplex.

Again, the interpretation of the prepositional phrase as a subjacency duplex misrepresents a unit with no logical structure as one with a logical structure. And again, as adpositions are not structure markers, they are irrelevant to the aims of the paper: a subjacency duplex analysis of structure markers.

[3] To be clear, the examination of this claim for instances of Tagalog presented in this paper have demonstrated that the claim is invalid. All cases presented are analysable as clause elements realised by adpositional phrases (adposition + nominal group).

And again, as adpositions are not structure markers, they are irrelevant to the aims of the paper: a subjacency duplex analysis of structure markers.