A grammar of happiness in Tagalog

NAGAYA Naonori

This paper presents a description and analysis of psych-predicates and expressions of perception in Tagalog. In this language, predicates change their form according to the semantic role of a subject NP by means of voice/valence-related morphology, often referred to as the ‘focus system’. In other words, different subject roles are marked on the predicate by different affixes. However, it is pointed out that there are two exceptions to this generalization: masaya ‘happy’ and malungkot ‘sad’. These two predicates do not change their form, whether their subject NP plays an experiencer role or a stimulus role.