The linker at full depth, including the trick where an attribute leaves its head behind
Beginner lesson 15 taught the linker as an adjective rule. It is more than that. Forman describes two ways of stating an attributive relationship:
marked juxtaposition — with
a or -ng
unmarked juxtaposition — with nothing at all
And a third device you already know: a ning-marked phrase modifying a noun head, which Forman calls "a very frequently occurring pattern."
The rule is phonological, exactly as the beginner course said: a after a head word ending in a consonant, -ng after one ending in a vowel.
maganakang lalaki — a good man
masanting a bale — an attractive house
malagung dalaga — beautiful girl [malagu + -ng + dalaga]
mayap a yabak — good morning [mayap + a + abak]
mayap a gatpanapun — good afternoon
mayap a bengi — good evening
That bracketed derivation is his, not mine — he analyses mayap a yabak as mayap + a + abak, with the glottal stop of abak surfacing as y after the linker.
Lesson 5 predicted this from the sound rules. Here is the grammar confirming it in the very first phrase the beginner course taught you.
Occasionally you get -ng and a together:
iting taung a iti — this man right here
deng marakal a taung a ren — those many people there
Forman offers two explanations and commits to neither: it may be a feature of slow or self-corrected speech, or the a may not be a linker at all but part of the demonstrative pronoun. He writes that "it may turn out on further analysis" to be the latter.
Notice marakal in that second phrase — dakal with the d → r change from lesson 5, because ma- ends in a vowel.
Some attributive pairs take no linker whatsoever:
asan dagat — deep-sea fish
kural damulag — carabao corral
lele dagat — edge of the sea
mula hangule — vegetable garden
ing bunduk Arayat — Mt. Arayat
king kasumangid mula — in the next yard
It is tempting to call these compound nouns and be done. Forman resists, because the same pattern appears in phrases no one would call compounds — aldo ning kebaitan "birthday," or that last locative example.
He also sets up a minimal contrast: dalagang bukid — linked, dalaga + -ng + bukid — is a kind of catfish, not a "mountain maiden." Linking or not linking can be the difference between a phrase and a name.
Here is the one that will trip you up in real speech. An attributive word can be separated from its head by a cluster of pronouns and particles.
Anam na ke banwa miasawa.
We've been married six years now.
| Word | Role |
|---|---|
| anam | "six" — attributive to banwa |
| na | particle: now, already |
| ke | fused pronoun |
| banwa | "year" — the head, two words away from its attribute |
| miasawa | "married" — a mi- stative from lesson 6 |
Numbers usually take first position in these constructions. What normally follows — the head noun — is displaced by the pronoun-and-particle cluster, and the head arrives late.
If you are parsing left to right and expecting anam to be followed by what there are six of, this sentence derails you immediately.
The habit to build: when you meet a number or descriptive followed by particles, hold it open and keep reading. Its head is coming.
A head word can be linked to an entire embedded sentence. When it is, the linker is a.
pialungan a e pupulai — a game with no running
The head is pialungan ("game"); a links it to the clause e pupulai ("not running"). English needs a preposition and a gerund; Kapampangan just links a clause.
kanitang minunang panaun a mabie ya pa
way back a long time ago when he was still alive
Forman unpacks this one himself: the head is panaun ("time"); kanita and minuna are a pronoun and a verbal descriptive linked with -ng; and what follows panaun is the embedded sentence mabie ya pa ("he is still alive"), attached by a.
This is the machinery behind relative clauses, which lesson 16 takes up properly.
In "Anam na ke banwa miasawa":
When can I leave the linker out? Not at will — the unlinked pairs are fixed expressions. Use the linker unless you have heard otherwise.
Is splitting common? Common enough that you must expect it. It happens whenever a particle cluster wants the position right after the first word.
Why does Forman hedge so much here? Because attributive syntax is where the analysis is least settled. A grammar that stated a clean rule would be overstating the evidence.
Noun phrases are where Kapampangan puts most of its complexity. Once you can read a split attributive and a clause-sized attribute, long sentences stop being walls.
Next: Two-Verb and Three-Verb Phrases — the pseudo-verbs you already know, working as a system.