Essential Tagalog Grammar: A Reference for Learners of Tagalog offers clear, simple and concise explanations and lots of practical everyday examples in a simple well-organized format. This comprehensive and user-friendly grammar also provides accurate definitions and translations, pronunciation marks (all long vowels and glottal stops are indicated throughout the book), extensive cross-referencing and a comprehensive index. Free audio recordings of the examples in the chapter on pronunciation can be downloaded from learningtagalog.com. Essential Tagalog Grammar is recommended for learners of Tagalog who want to understand how the language works and have a quick reference handy, native speakers who want to gain insights into their own language, and anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of Tagalog grammar.

The Philippines series of the PALI Language Texts, under the general editorship of Howard P. McKaughan, consists of lesson textbooks, grammars, and dictionaries for seven major Filipino languages.

Over the last twenty years or so, most of the work on the syntax of Philippine languages has been focused on the question of whether or not these languages can be said to have grammatical subjects, and if so which argument of a basic transitive clause should be analysed as being the subject. Paul Kroeger's contribution to this debate asserts that grammatical relations such as subject and object are syntactic notions, and must be identified on the basis of syntactic properties, rather than by semantic roles or discourse functions. A large number of syntactic processes in Tagalog uniquely select the argument which bears the nominative case. On the other hand, the data which have been used in the debate to assert the ambiguity of subjecthood are best analysed in terms of semantic rather than syntactic constraints. Together these facts support an analysis that takes the nominative argument as the subject. Kroeger examines the history of the subjecthood debate and uses data from Tagalog to test the theories that have been put forth. His conclusions entail consequences for certain linguistic concepts and theories, and lead Kroeger to assert that grammatical relations are not defined in terms of surface phrase structure configurations, contrary to the assumptions of many approaches to syntax including the Government-Binding theory. Paul Kroeger is presently doing fieldwork in Austronesian languages and teaching linguistics to fieldworkers from around the world.

The Philippines series of the PALI Language Texts, under the general editorship of Howard P. McKaughan, consists of lesson textbooks, grammars, and dictionaries for seven major Filipino languages. Ilokano is an Austronesian language. It ranks third among the major languages of the Philippines, being spoken by just over 12 percent of the population. Widely spoken throughout the Philippines, Ilokano is the dominant language of most of the provinces of Northern Luzon and is used as a lingua franca by non-Ilokano speakers in this area. Settlers have also carried the language to Mindoro and to several areas in Mindanao. The Ilokano reference grammar was developed under the auspices of the Pacific and Asian Linguistics Institute (PALI) of the University of Hawaii, and accompanies the Ilokano dictionary by the same author as well as Ilokano Lessons by Bernabe, Lapid, and Sibayan. This reference grammar concentrates on syntactic structures. Professor Constantino cites morphological farms in depth in his dictionary. Consequently the treatment here should be used in conjunction with both the dictionary and the lessons mentioned above. It is the hope of the editor and author alike that this reference grammar will prove of value and interest to learners of Ilokano.