Ilocano grammar

Ilocano grammar is the study of the morphological and syntactic structures of the Ilocano language, a language spoken in the northern Philippines by ethnic Ilocanos and Ilocano communities in the US, Saudi Arabia and other countries around the globe.

Ilocano is an agglutinative language. This agglutinating characteristic is most apparent in its verbal morphology, which has a Philippine-type voice system.

Ilocano has two subsets of determiners. Articles are similar to "the" and "a" or "an" in English. Demonstratives point out something ("this" or "that"), whether what is being referred to is in space, in time or is something previously mentioned.

Ilocano determiners have only two forms (core and oblique) — unlike Ilocano pronouns, which have three: absolutive, ergative and oblique. The core form may function for either the absolutive or ergative cases.

Ilocano has two sets of articles, common and personal. Personal articles are used for people, names, and personal titles. Common articles are used with all other nouns (including names of countries and cities).

Kinship terms such as "mother" or "uncle" can take either set of articles. Preceded by the common article, the term is more generalized or conceptual; preceded by a personal article, the reference is more specific (the speaker refers to a member of his or her family).

The same can also be said of titles or offices.

Similar to articles, demonstratives has two forms (core and oblique) and two numbers (singular and plural). Like Spanish or Japanese, Ilokano has a three-way distinction regarding space. In addition, Ilocano has another set, which refers to objects or events not visible to either the speaker or the listener and occurred or existed before the current time frame. Therefore, Ilocano demonstratives have a five-way distinction relative to time and space.

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