Conjunctions, clisis, and topicalization in Tagalog

This paper attempts to provide a more accurate description of three understudied properties of Tagalog conjunctions (the ability to undergo ay-topicalization, to host enclitic particles, and to host enclitic pronouns) and to overview issues for future research brought up by this description. The study is based primarily on data from the Tagalog corpus at sketchengine.eu and supplemented by Google searches for a convenience subset of 30 Tagalog conjunctions, consisting mostly of causal conjunctions and several others. The conjunctions in study fall into five categories based on value combinations of the examined properties: group 1 has positive values for all three properties; group 2 conjunctions can host both types of enclitics but does not undergo topicalization; group 3 conjunctions can undergo topicalization and host only particles; group 4 conjunctions can only host particles but cannot undergo topicalization; and group 5 has negative values for all three properties. Most conjunctions examined in this paper belong to group 3. Contrary to the observations made in some published descriptions of Tagalog enclitics, the corpus data show that most of the examined conjunctions can host enclitic particles, and at least three can also host pronouns. The attested value combinations show that the ability to be topicalized and the ability to host pronouns both entail the ability to host particles, which stems from the general properties of topicalized and fronted constituents. The variation found in the behavior of the conjunctions raises a number of questions that need to be studied in further research, including the interaction between conjunction topicalization and information structure, the possibility of the varying conjunction properties pointing to different grammaticalization pathways, the ability to co-occur with the conjunction at 'and' in place of the topic marker ay, and, finally, obligatoriness of being enclitic hosts.