If a clause contains NPs, the order is V O A, but this order is not fixed. The selected argument is assigned a specific case, regardless of whether it is in A, S, or O syntactic role. In Philippine studies, this argument has traditionally been referred to as the 'focus', 'subject' or 'topic'. As these terms carry other associations as well, Donohue uses the term 'nominative' to refer to the case assigned to it, which is expressed by the article na. The other core article te assigns non-nominative case.
Verbal indexing is only available for so-called 'core arguments'.
A TB noun phrase is head initial. Both NPs and KPs may be prepositional complements. Nouns characteristically appear inside NPs, are preceded by an article, a preposition or a numeral classifier. Verbs are the class of words that can be prefixed for subject when used as the head of a main clause. Adjectives are a subclass of the non-agentive intransitive verbs.