A sometimes puzzling area of syntax involves the many modifiers that occur above the phrase level. Role and Reference Grammar identifies three levels of the clause structure and predicts that each of these modifiers will structurally and semantically fit into one of these levels. Data from Kankanaey, a language in the northern Philippines, supports this claim by looking at the modifiers, called 'operators,' and noting that they either directly affect the predicate, or interact with the core of the clause by affecting the position of the pronominal arguments, or else occur in the clause without affecting any other part of it.