An Effective Tagalog verbs
I've been wanting to do a post about Tagalog verbs for a while now. I've brought my notes together to give you
all this entry.
Currently, modern Tagalog verb conjugation is as outlined in the following chart.
|
Infinitive
|
Contemplative (future actions) |
Progressive (past and present actions) |
Completed (past actions) |
Actor Focus 1 |
-um- (gumawa) |
CV- (gagawa) |
CumV- (gumagawa) |
-um- (gumawa) |
Actor Focus 2 |
mag- (magbigay) |
magCV- (magbibigay) |
nagCV- (nagbibigay) |
nag- (nagbigay) |
Object Focus 1 |
-in (kainin) |
CV-...-in (kakainin) |
CinV- (kinakain) |
-in- (kinain) |
Object Focus 2 |
i- (isulat) |
iCV- (isusulat) |
iCinV- (isinusulat) |
i- -in- (isinulat) |
Object Focus 3 |
-an (tawagan) |
CV-...-an (tatawagan) |
CinV- ... -an (tinatawagan) |
-in- ... -an (tinawagan) |
I hope you all will find this chart easy to understand, but I think it's simple enough. The dashes represent the
position of the affix in relation to the rootword. CV stands for consonant and vowel and represents the first
consonant and the first vowel of the rootword, hence reduplication.
For those who are learning Tagalog, the root words used are gawa (do), bigay (give), kain (eat), sulat (write),
and tawag (call). So if you look at the proper column, you can tell that if you add the infix -um- to the rootword
gawa you'll get gumawa (did). And if you attach the infix -in- with the suffix -an to tawag, you'll get tinawagan
(called [someone]). Got it? Please also keep in mind that these are the basic affixes, so none of the potentive,
causative, reason, etc. affixes are included.
However, Tagalog verbal conjugation was not quite as it was as early as a century ago. I have consulted
two Tagalog grammar books from the Spanish era; Francisco Blancas de San José's 1610 Arte y Reglas
de la lengua tagala and Fr. Sebastián de Totanes's 1745 Arte de la lengua tagala.