Verb Reference: bigay | Filipino Grammar

The root bigay covers giving, handing over, granting, and contributing. Its three central verb families select different participants: magbigay selects the giver, ibigay selects the transferred thing, and bigyan selects the recipient. English give can translate all three, so the marker frame—not the English gloss—shows how the Filipino clause is organized.

All unlabelled examples are neutral contemporary Filipino. Review the i- conveyance guide for the wider class to which ibigay belongs.

Core Paradigms

Family and pivot	Basic	Completed	Incompleted	Contemplated
giver pivot, actor voice	magbigay	nagbigay	nagbibigay	magbibigay
conveyed-theme pivot, i- voice	ibigay	ibinigay	ibinibigay	ibibigay
recipient pivot, -an voice	bigyan	binigyan	binibigyan	bibigyan

Bigyan is a conventional contraction of bigay + -an. It is not bigayan in this ordinary recipient-pivot family. Aspect then rebuilds the actual surface forms binigyan, binibigyan, bibigyan.

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Store a three-role frame: giver, theme, recipient. Voice selects one as pivot, and the other two receive the markers required by that family.

Three Views of One Transfer

Nagbigay si Nilda ng ekstrang susi kay Ramon bago magsara ang opisina.

Nilda gave Ramon a spare key before the office closed. (giver pivot)

Ibinigay ni Nilda kay Ramon ang ekstrang susi bago magsara ang opisina.

Nilda gave Ramon the spare key before the office closed. (key pivot)

Binigyan ni Nilda ng ekstrang susi si Ramon bago magsara ang opisina.

Nilda gave Ramon a spare key before the office closed. (recipient pivot)

The roles remain constant. With nagbigay, Nilda is si Nilda, the key is ng ekstrang susi, and Ramon is kay Ramon. With ibinigay, the key becomes ang ekstrang susi and Nilda becomes ni Nilda. With binigyan, Ramon becomes si Ramon, while the key takes ng. These are voice contrasts, not active, passive, and “double-object” versions of an English sentence.

Aspect in Each Family

Nagbibigay ang klinika ng libreng bitamina sa mga buntis tuwing Miyerkules.

The clinic gives free vitamins to pregnant women every Wednesday.

Incompleted nagbibigay has a habitual reading because of tuwing Miyerkules. It need not mean that a distribution is happening at this moment.

Ibinibigay na ng kawani sa mga aplikante ang kanilang mga numero.

The employee is now giving the applicants their numbers.

The ongoing transferred things are the pivot. Particle na marks the change into the expected distribution phase.

Bibigyan namin ng kopya ang bawat kalahok pagkatapos ng talakayan.

We will give every participant a copy after the discussion.

Contemplated bibigyan selects each participant as recipient pivot. Exclusive namin excludes the addressee from the giver group.

Commands use the basic form even when the requested action is later:

Ibigay mo kay Lolo ang gamot pagkatapos niyang kumain.

Give Grandfather the medicine after he eats.

The future time of the command does not require contemplated ibibigay.

Questions, Negation, and Omission

—Kanino mo ibibigay ang sobrang tiket? —Ibibigay ko iyon kay Dina kung makakasama siya.

—Who will you give the extra ticket to? —I'll give it to Dina if she can come.

Kanino asks for the oblique recipient while ang sobrang tiket/iyon remains the conveyed-theme pivot.

Hindi binigyan ng tagapamahala ng pahintulot ang bagong pangkat.

The manager did not give the new group permission.

Negation does not change the recipient-pivot frame. The actor and abstract theme remain ng-series phrases.

The theme may be omitted when already clear: Binigyan mo ba si Lea? can mean “Did you give Lea some/it?” only when the context supplies what was given. Without context, name the theme.

Common Collocations and Lexicalized Extensions

The root appears in many conventional expressions. Their meanings are related to transfer but cannot always be calculated word for word.

A further common branch is distributive mamigay—namigay—namimigay—mamimigay, “give things out.” Theme-selecting ipamigay—ipinamigay—ipinapamigay/ipinamimigay—ipapamigay/ipamimigay means “give away” or “distribute”; the paired incompleted and contemplated forms reflect accepted contemporary reduplication variation. These branches add a distributive or give-away meaning and do not replace the neutral three-role contrast above.

magbigay ng payo/pahintulot/pansin — give advice/permission/attention
magbigay-daan — give way; allow something to proceed
magbigay-pugay — pay tribute (formal)
magbigay-alam — give notice, inform (formal)
ipagbigay-alam — formally notify or make known (formal/administrative)
bigay na bigay — giving one's all; fully committed (informal)

Nagbigay-daan ang magkabilang panig upang maipagpatuloy ang pag-uusap.

Both sides made concessions so that the talks could continue. (formal-neutral)

The hyphenated expression is lexicalized; it does not describe physically handing someone a road. Similarly, magbigay-pansin means “pay attention,” not transfer an object called attention.

Register and Variation

Neutral conversation commonly uses ibigay and bigyan. Administrative writing favors compounds such as ipagbigay-alam, but ordinary speech often chooses ipaalam or sabihin instead. Do not present the longer formal expression as universally “better.”

In (informal) conversation, binigay, binibigay, and bibigay often occur where careful neutral writing retains ibinigay, ibinibigay, and ibibigay. The shortened forms keep theme-pivot alignment in this transfer reading; context also distinguishes contemplated bibigay “will give” from the separate bumigay family “give way, yield, or collapse.”

The root can also be a noun: regalong bigay ni Tessa “a gift from Tessa.” That construction is not an aspect form. Mapagbigay is an adjective meaning “generous”; it belongs to the same lexical family but has its own syntax.

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A productive-looking compound may be conventional and register-bound. Learn magbigay-daan and ipagbigay-alam as complete expressions, including their hyphenation and usage.

Common Mistakes

Using the theme-pivot frame with a pivot giver

❌ Ibinigay si Nilda ang susi kay Ramon.

Incorrect—ibinigay selects the key, so Nilda requires ni.

✅ Ibinigay ni Nilda kay Ramon ang susi bago magtakipsilim.

Nilda gave Ramon the key before dusk.

Keeping kay when the recipient is selected

❌ Binigyan ni Nilda ng susi kay Ramon.

Incorrect—binigyan selects Ramon as the personal pivot, so use si.

✅ Binigyan ni Nilda ng susi si Ramon para makapasok siya sa bodega.

Nilda gave Ramon a key so he could enter the storage room.

Inventing a regular -an form

❌ Bigayan mo ng tubig ang mga naghihintay.

Incorrect for this recipient-pivot command—the established contracted form is bigyan.

✅ Bigyan mo ng tubig ang mga naghihintay sa labas.

Give water to the people waiting outside.

Treating completed aspect as English past morphology

❌ Ibinigay-ed namin ang mga sertipiko kahapon.

Incorrect—ibinigay already presents the transfer as completed.

✅ Ibinigay namin sa mga nagtapos ang mga sertipiko kahapon.

We gave the graduates their certificates yesterday.

Key Takeaways

Magbigay selects the giver, ibigay the conveyed thing, and bigyan the recipient.
Aspect changes event phase without changing each family's participant alignment.
Bigyan and its aspect forms show a lexical contraction that must be memorized.
Abstract objects such as advice and permission use the same core frames, while compounds may be lexicalized.
Formal ipagbigay-alam and neutral conversational alternatives belong to different registers.

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