Adjectival passives and the structure of VP in Tagalog

This paper explores a set of surprising contrasts between two major classes of adjectives in Tagalog. It is concerned, in particular, with the discovery that adjectival passives in Tagalog cannot occur as the main predicate of various types of impersonal clauses—i.e., clause types in which the adjectives sole argument cannot be promoted to subject. I argue that this fact follows ultimately from the claim that adjectival passives are unaccusative. This claim is compared with the observation that, in many other languages (e.g., Hebrew), adjectival passives apparently pattern as unergative. I explore the hypothesis that differences relating to the argument structure of adjectival passives can be related to larger architectural differences among languages, relating specifically to the structure of VP.

► This work compares two classes of adjectives in Tagalog. ► The adjectival passive class of adjective is argued to have an unaccusative argument structure. ► The existence of unaccusative adjectives in some but not all languages is related to the architecture of the VP.