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Abstract
This paper presents a corpus-based study of a number of different types of previously undescribed constructions formed with the Tagalog noun kasama ‘companion’. Apart from independent and attributive uses, kasama frequently occurs as the predicate of an adjunct clause that can introduce a comitative participant, a semantically depictive secondary predicate, an event-oriented adjunct, or a predicative complement. The study analyses the frequency of kasama in all of these types of constructions and looks into their specific properties. This includes: the semantic distinction between additive and inclusory constructions with kasama; animacy agreement between arguments of kasama in additive constructions; variation in case marking of arguments of kasama; the preponderance of the absence of linkers – commonly known to introduce adverbial clauses in Tagalog – which are used to attach the kasama clause to the main clause; attested controllers of the kasama clause; positions available for the kasama clause in the sentence. Variation in case marking and compatibility with linkers suggests a classification of Tagalog adjunct clauses similar to that of Tagalog adverbials and prepositions. There is also some evidence to believe that kasama is being grammaticalized as a preposition. Comitative and semantically depictive constructions with kasama, which account for a quarter of the corpus sample, have never been studied before, despite the fact that Tagalog is included in several typological studies on comitative and depictive constructions.
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