The purpose of this paper is to explore typological issues and characteristics of the Tagalog language through which we would like to contribute to the typological discussion of this language in Korea. Tagalog is one of the frequently cited and discussed languages in modern studies of typology. Important issues thereby include ergativity,subject- hood, basic word order, and voice, which are closely related to one another. Because of the characteristic features of this language, a new linguistic term was invented, i.e. ‘the Philippine type clause,’ indicating the difficulties in finding a clear solution to the issues. In this paper we examine these issues on the basis of the language data we collected through interviews with a native speaker of Tagalog. Through our analysis of this data, we reached the conclusion that Tagalog could basically be considered an ergative language with the VSO basic word order, and a rich voice system. Beside this, the ‘copula’ construction, the distinction between nouns and verbs, the development of articles, the tense system, and the relative prominence of aspect are also important typological issues of the Tagalog language. No copula or copula-like element is attested in this language. Contrary to previous discussions such as those by Himmelmann (1987) and Sasse (1993), there seems to be a clear-cut distinction between nouns and verbs in Tagalog: only the verbs are conjugated, but not the nouns. It is also noteworthy that Tagalog has no tense system and it is an aspect-prominent language, i.e. the aspect is generally realized in sentences, unlike the tense and mood.