Ay-Inversion in Tagalog: Information Structure and Morphosyntax of an Austronesian Language

Tagalog, an Austronesian language, is widely spoken and understood throughout the Philippine archipelago where it served as the basis for the national language Filipino. The language is often cited for its many unusual linguistic properties. Drawing on both spoken fieldwork data and written data from novels, this study investigates several phenomena at Tagalog’s interface of information structure and morphosyntax.

Aside from the default predicate-initial word order, the Tagalog language ha...