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Ivatan is the language of some 13,000 inhabitants of the Batanes Islands, situated in the Luzon Strait north of Luzon in the Philippines, and separated from the Southern tip of Taiwan by the Bashi Channel. Ivatan is a member of the Philippine Branch of Malayo-Polynesian languages. This dissertation is a syntactic description of the Central Dialect of Ivatan, using Tagmemic Theory as the descriptive model. Both Clause level constructions (basic and derived), and Phrase level constructions are described. Longacre's (1964)1 proposed operations on tagmemic formulae (Reading, Permutation and Exponence) are clarified and developed in relation to Ivatan. A prominent feature of Ivatan is the presence of a number of verb stem classes, whose occurrence in a predicate, coupled with a change in transform potential, is diagnostic of syntagmemic change. Criteria for classifying verb stems in previous descriptions of Philippine languages is examined and found to be mostly inadequate for Ivatan. The classifying criteria decided upon for Ivatan verb stems are (1) potential clause expansion of nuclear grammatical slots, and (2) potential clause transformations. There are twelve sets of non-causative verbal constructions in Ivatan. Each set is characterized by a distinct class of the verbs manifesting the Predicate tagmeme and by contrasting features of other nuclear tagmemes. For each set of constructions the discussion provides (1) a description of the characteristics of each set and criteria for establishing it as a separate series of syntagmemes; (2) the interpretation of the grammatical function of the constituent tagmemes in terms of situational role; (3) a representative list of stems of the verb class manifested in the Predicate; (4) a formal statement as a syntagmemic paradigm; and (5) a citation paradigm with literal and free translations. A broad categorization of verb stem classes into a transitive-intransitive dichotomy, established with non-causative verbal constructions is highly relevant to causative verbal constructions. Contrasting paradigms of causative syntagmemes based on the transitive-intransitive dichotomy are presented. Clauses with Predicates manifested by adjectives and by nouns are also described. Phrase description includes formulae and examples of Possessor, Appositional, Coordinate and Attributive phrases, the latter consisting of demonstrative, qualifying, measurement, count, partitive, teen-count, characteristic and similitude subtypes. The final chapter presents rules for deriving Stative, Emphasis, Emphatic Negative, Nominalized, Relative, Identificational and Yes-No Interrogative clauses from the basic constructions presented in the first chapter.