Appendix:Tagalog nouns

Key concepts

• common noun
• proper noun
• simple noun
• compound noun
• reduplication
• gender
• noun case
• noun affixes

Types

By class

Tagalog nouns are classified into two types, which are same as in English nouns:

• Common nouns (pangngalang pambalana)

  Example: aso, bahay, dagat, halaman, ilog

• Proper nouns (pangngalang pantangi)

  Example: Asya, Karagatang Atlantiko, Diana, Junjun, muníng

Tagalog words derived from proper nouns are also capitalized (e.g. Asya -> Asyano). Nationalities and languages are capitalized because of English language influence in spelling.

By morphology

Tagalog nouns are classified also by their morphology, which are:

• Simple nouns (pangngalang payak) - corresponds to word roots

  Example: araw, baboy, dagat, pulo, tao

• Affixed nouns (pangngalang maylapi) - nouns formed by adding affixes to a root

  Example: tag-araw, bahayan, karagatan, pag-ibig, tauhan

• Compound nouns (pangngalang tambalan) – nouns formed by combining two nouns (or a noun and another word or vice versa). Modifiers may or may not be joined by the linker na and its enclitic variants. Spelling varies: older compounds may be spelled as one word while newer ones are written with either a space or a hyphen between words. The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) prescribes hyphens to separate elements in newer compounds.

  Example: silid-aralan, bahay-bata, kutong lupa, halamang-ugat, tubig-alat, buntong-hininga, punongkahoy

• Reduplicated nouns (pangngalang inuulit)
  • Partially reduplicated nouns

    Example: pag-aaral, mandaragat, pamamahayag,

  • Fully reduplicated nouns

    Example: kuro-kuro, haluhalo, tira-tira

Attributes

Gender

Tagalog has four genders: male, female, neuter, and no gender, but has no real grammatical gender.

Tagalog nouns have gender if they refer to people or animals. Other objects, like places, have no gender.

• Has gender: aso, Roberto, Dionisia, Joseph, Isabella
• No gender: bato, damit, Maynila

Tagalog nouns with gender can be classified as masculine, feminine or neuter. A noun is masculine if it specifically refers to a male while it is feminine if it specifically refers to a female. Tagalog has nouns with natural gender because they have been given a specific gender. On the other hand, there are Tagalog nouns with neuter gender, especially if it is a common noun.

• Masculine: Rolando, Alberto, Diego, Joel, Dennis
• Feminine: Juana, Adelaida, Elena, Hannah, Michelle
• Neuter: ibon, damit, guro

Loanwords from Spanish can be changed from feminine to masculine and vice versa by changing the final a with o or the other way around. But as grammatical gender is not present in Tagalog, the article or verb conjugation to use is always the same.

Case

Noun case is Tagalog is indicated by markers, as summarized in this table:

Noun class	Absolutive	Ergative	Oblique
Singular non-personal	ang	ng	sa
Plural non-personal	ang mga	ng mga	sa mga
Singular personal	si	ni	kay
Plural personal	sina	nina	kina

Noun-forming affixes

In Tagalog, many nouns can be formed by adding affixes to a root word or a nouns. Examples are:

• -an (becomes -han in words ending with a vowel with no glottal stop)
• -in (becomes -hin in words ending with a vowel with no glottal stop)
• ka- -an (becomes ka- -han in words ending with a vowel with no glottal stop)
• mag-
• mang-
• pa-
• pa- -an (becomes pa- -han in words ending with a vowel with no glottal stop)