Predicational and specificational constructions in Tagalog
NAGAYA Naonori

　In this paper I present a description and analysis of nonverbal-predicate constructions in Tagalog, with special reference to predicational and specificational constructions. The major findings of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, nonverbal-predicate constructions in this language can be classified into three types: predicational, specificational, and identificational constructions. Second, although they look similar in terms of surface structure and truthconditional meanings, predicational and specificational constructions are different in several ways. The most important distinction pertains to the point of utterance. Namely, the point of utterance in predicational constructions lies in attributing a previously unknown property to an individual, whereas that in specificational constructions is in specifying who it is that has the property speaker and hearer already knew. Lastly, there are three cases where my typology of nonverbal-predicate constructions appears to fail: structural ambiguity between specificational and identificational constructions, specificational constructions with an indefinite complement NP, and self-introducing expressions of the Ako si Maria type.