Prosodic indicators of phrase structure in Tagalog transitive sentences

To date, there has not been much consensus regarding the phrase structure of Tagalog despite the amount of research done and evidence brought to bear on this issue. This paper contributes to this ongoing discussion by presenting experimental data from the prosody of this language. The major finding of this study is that in Tagalog transitive sentences, verbs are durationally shorter when directly followed by the less syntactically prominent argument, suggesting that these arguments form tighter constituents with the verb.