Cebuano grammar encompasses the rules that define the Cebuano language, the most widely spoken of all the languages in the Visayan Group of languages, spoken in Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, part of Leyte island, part of Samar island, Negros Oriental, especially in Dumaguete, and the majority of cities and provinces of Mindanao.
Cebuano has eight basic parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, particles, prepositions and conjunctions. Cebuano is an agglutinative yet partially inflected language: pronouns are inflected by number, and verbs are inflected for aspect, focus, and mood.
Morphosyntactic alignment
Cebuano, along with many other Philippine languages, are sometimes considered ergative or nominative in alignment, both being incorrect and correct as it has features of both systems.
Cebuano verbs are morphologically complex and take on a variety of affixes reflecting voice, quality, aspect, mood, and others. Cebuano arguably follows Austronesian alignment. Basically, verbs conjugate by using these affixes according to which argumentative role the noun in the direct case has. This noun in the direct case can be the doer of the action, the recipient of the action, the purpose for the action, or the means by which the action was made possible; which are all argumentative roles. The direct case hides the noun's otherwise-evident argumentative role, which the verb then makes up for by conjugating with specific affixes that indicate which argumentative role the noun in the direct case has. Some Cebuano grammar teachers call the noun in the direct case the topic of the sentence, but some others call it the focus, voice, or trigger; as the verb and the other nouns in the sentence have all their noun markers and affixes change accordingly.
Cebuano has four voices: the active voice a.k.a. the agent trigger the passive voice for direct objects a.k.a. the patient trigger the passive voice for indirect objects and/or locations a.k.a. the circumstantial trigger the passive voice for instruments a.k.a. the instrument trigger.
The direct case morpheme, which marks the topic in Cebuano, is ang or si.
Agent trigger
Here, the agent/doer Maria is marked with si, the personal direct noun marker. The prefix Mo- indicates that the noun in the direct case (Maria) is also the agent/doer, which would not have been known otherwise.
Patient trigger
Here, the patient/object Bugas is marked with ang, the general direct noun marker. The suffix -on indicates that the noun in the direct case (bugas) is also the patient/object, which would not have been known otherwise. Babaye is marked with sa, the general indirect noun marker which indicates that babaye is not in the direct case but is still the agent/doer of the sentence. Via context and common word order, it is evident that lata is not the agent despite it being marked with sa as well (in this case, it is used as the general oblique definite noun marker). It is not the first noun in the sentence (as the agent/doer usually is) and nor can a can cook rice on its own (context).
Circumstantial trigger
The circumstantial trigger affixes select for location, benefactee and/or goal topics.
With location subject
Here, the location/indirect object lata is marked with ang, the general direct noun marker. The suffix -an indicates that the noun in the direct case (lata) is also the location of the action, which would not have been known otherwise. Babaye is marked with sa, the general indirect noun marker which indicates that babaye is not in the direct case but is still the agent of the sentence. Bugas is marked with the general oblique indefinite marker og, indicating that it is neither the noun in the direct case nor the agent noun, but rather that it is the direct object of the sentence.
With benefactee subject
Here, the indirect object or benefactee Pedro is marked with si, the personal direct noun marker. The suffix -an indicates that the noun in the direct case (Pedro) is also the indirect object of the action, which would not have been known otherwise. Maria is marked with the personal indirect noun marker ni, which indicates that Maria is not the noun in the direct case but is still the agent of the sentence. Kalamay is marked with the general oblique indefinite marker og, indicating that kalamay is neither the noun in the direct case nor the agent/doer, but rather, it is the direct object.
