1 Multiple Motivations for Preposing in Philippine Languages Michael Wilson I. Rosero Project Staff, Digital Signal Processing Laboratory, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute, University of the Philippines-Diliman mhawi.rosero@gmail.com ABSTRACT When we speak of word order of a given language, we look at transitive clauses with two lexical noun arguments, A and O (Thompson, unk). Philippine languages 1 have been analyzed to have predicate-initial basic word order in which a clause is typically verb-initial, followed by nominal or pronominal arguments. However, while it is typical to see a predicate-initial construction in any Philippine-type language for that matter, there are instances where arguments are placed in a pre-predicate position. This movement is called preposing. A preliminary study of Kana, a Cebuano dialect, has shown that it favors preposed construction under certain conditions which include but are not limited to: a) clitic position and movement; b) setting the scene in a discourse narrative; c) listing of information; d) exclusive contrast. Moreover, the data have shown preference for preposing of A-pronominals and predicate-medial word order tendencies. In this paper, we will examine this further, and demonstrate the implications of this preference in the word order of other Philippine languages namely; Chavacano, Ilokano, Tagalog, and Waray. 1 Introduction A clause is the basic unit of discourse for accomplishing the ends in communication. It consists of at least a predicate (usually a verb but can be nominal or adjectival) and an entity as seen below in examples 1 and 2. Kana 1. [MayPRED usa ka=táu]EXIST CL EXIST NUM LKR=N ‘May isang tao.” “There was a man.” 2. íya=ngA gi-dalaPRED ang usa ka bukagO 3OBL=LKR PST-carry-TR(-on) ABS NUM LKR basket ‘Kanyang dinala ang isang basket.” “He took the basket.” 1 ‘Philippine-type or Philippine languages’ as used in this study refers to the languages in the Philippines that exhibits similar morphological and syntactical structures and share a vast number of lexical cognates. Nolasco (2003) identifies ergativity as one universal feature of Philippine languages that gives evidence to a Philippine- typology.