How Filipino (Tagalog) Case Markers Affect the Perception of Supernatural Agency

Written with the assistance of Lyra Joson at the University of New Hampshire’s Departments of Linguistics & Psychology, and Sean Madigan at UNH’s Department of Linguistics.

This paper is an interdisciplinary integration of the field of Linguistics and the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). The primary aim of this research is to analyze how Tagalog case markers affect how people perceive God or supernatural agents (SAs). CSR theories claim that people cross-culturally (over-)perceive supernatural agents like gods, spirits, or ghosts as human-like. SAs tend to have the same characteristics as humans do, due to universal folk psychology tendencies, but SA attributes are otherworldly and thereby make them memorable and salient. These theories are often discussed but rarely tested, and when they are tested they are typically done so in laboratory/behavior psychology experiments, and especially in WEIRD settings with English as the predominant linguistic backdrop.

Tagalog, meanwhile, is hugely different from English in a variety of linguistic ways. One difference is particularly notable for CSR: Tagalog has two case markers and determiners that are used differentially for human versus non-human subjects of the sentence. The language linguistically signals, in other words, whether a noun is a human-like subject or a non-human subject, thereby making it a prime test case – in a lived, historic culture that is non-WEIRD and non-English – for CSR’s claims around supernatural agency attribution.

This paper analyzes CSR theories of SA attribution, and tests them through an online survey from 40 native Filipino speakers who currently reside in the Philippines. Preliminary data suggest that when gods are involved as the subject, they are coded with non-human case markers. We also see differences depending on whether gods are framed in Tagalog or English terms: human case markers are used for English terms for gods (Lord, God, Jesus, etc.) while non-human markers are used for Tagalog terms (Diyos, Panginnon, Hesus, etc.). Such findings support certain of CSR’s theories but also problematize the more universalizing claims around cross-cultural supernatural agent attribution at the heart of certain foundational CSR theories.