Notes on Noun Phrase Structure in Tagalog

This paper presents some observations on the syntax and semantics of the Tagalog phrase marking particles ang, ng, and sa. More specifically, it is concerned with investigating the following two points. First, while there is some evidence for the widely held view that the phase marking particles form a kind of paradigm in that they are at least in partial complementary distribution, they differ significantly in their distributional characteristics. These differences reflect the fact that historically speaking, the phrase marking particles develop from two quite different sources, i.e. determiners and prepositions. Synchronically, they clearly interact in a way that makes it difficult to analyze them unequivocally as either determiners or prepositions. Still, the different distributional characteristics make it doubtful whether it is actually warranted to assign them the same structural position within NP/DP.