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.