Tagalog and Other Major Languages in

the Philippines

BY:Ernesto Constantino

Introduction

• This paper has 2 parts– A general introduction

on the major languages of the Philippines

– Review of the developments in the study of the Major languages since the beginning of the 20th century

Major Languages

Number•William MacKinlay

– 8 tongues and 60 dialects (1902)

•Otley Beyer– 43 tongues and 87

dialects(1917)

•1960 census– 75 tongues and 300

dialects

•Major Ethnic Groups

– Cebuano– Tagalog– Ilokano– Hiligainon– Bikolano– Waray– Kapangpanagn– Pangasian

•8 largest ethnic groups•More than 85 percent of

the total population of the Phil.

• In 1937 Tagalog was chosen as the basis of the Philippine National Language now called Filipino

• Favored because it is spoken mainly in Metro Manila

Spread of Tagalog

0

20

40

60

80

1939 1948 1960 1967

tagalog

Review of Linguistic Works

Three Periods

• Spanish Period

• American Period (1900)

• Independence Period (1946)

Spanish Period

• Done by friars

• Are mostly grammars, dictionaries, catechisms, confessionals and Doctrinas Christianas

American Period

Army Linguists

– At 1st were mostly done by army officers

– Produced 2 articles and 3 books

– Studies were done for scientific and academic concern

Chief Linguists

• Cecilio Lopez (Philippines)• Otto Scheerer (Germany)• Morice Vanoverbergh

(Belgium)• Carlos Everett Connant

(USA)• Frank Blake (USA)• Leonard Bloomfield (USA)

Historical Works

• Connant

– Did 10 articles on Phil. Major Languages

– Government Translator

– Made 6 word lists containing 50-200 words of minor languages

– Seb.-Eng. Dictionary (5500 words)

• Connant

– Pioneer in historical reconstruction of the sounds of the Philippines Major languages

– Genetic classification or subgrouping of languages

– Investigates the origins of the sounds f and v in the Phil. Languages

• Constenoble

– Existence of monosyllabic roots in the Phil. Languages

– Tag. words in which the sound changes deviate from regular ones are borrowed from or influenced by Kap.

• Other Works– Blake

• notes on Phonology in Phil. Languages:

• 3 vowels, 13 consonants, 2 dipthongs and e, r, h and glottal stop

Descriptive Works

• Blake– Among the 1st to become

interested in the study as well as the teaching of the Phil. Languages

– Made 27 articles dealing directly with the languages and dialects of the Phil.

– Wrote a book on Tag. grammar and a monograph on Tag. Accent

– Most important work is his Grammar of Tagalog (1925)

– Stated that as a general rule practically all any word in Tag. belonging to any part of speech may be verbalized

– Stated that verbs may either be in the active or passive voice

– Stated verbs also express case relation

• Bloomfield– Grammatical Analysis of

Tagalog (1917)

– 2 revolutionary innovations made by Bloomfield’s work:

1. Made the use of informants a must in gathering data

2. Using new grammatical terms in place of traditional or more familiar ones in describing the same grammatical categories

• Lopez– Wrote a comparison on Tag.

and Ilk. for his dissertation

– Manual of the Philippine National Language

• Vanoverbergh– Did extensive work on Ilk.

And Igorot and Negrito Languages

Independence Period

• Began in 1946 after the 2nd World War

• Increase in the number of linguists and the a great number of linguistic studies about the Phil. Languages were made

Three Significant Developments in

Philippine linguistics

1. Establishment of the Phil. Branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) -1953

2. Application of the linguistic approach to teaching English to the Filipinos

3. Gradual increase in the number of Filipino linguists

Classifications

• 3 attempts to classify the Philippine Languages and Dialects

1. Northern Luzon Type• Northern • Southern• Central• Southeastern

2.Thomas and Healey– 37 languages and dialects

including the major Languages except Hil. and War.

3. Dyen, Isidore– Classification of

austronesian languages including 60 Phil. Languages except War. and Png.

– Subgrouping procedures– Judgment by inspection– Discovery of exclusively

shared innovation– Lexicostatistic dating

Historical

• Rufus Hendon– Wrote 2 articles on Proto-

Malayo Polynesian reconstruction which included Tag.

• Lopez– Recent paper made an

attempt to trace the origins of the Phil. Languages

Descriptive • Constantino

– Syntactic analysis of the Phil. Languages

– Groups the predicative sentences according to the structure of their ICs (immediate constituent)• Definite • Indefinite• Situational

– Transformational analysis of sentences: derives passive sentences from the active

– Says that the occurrence of the affixes –in, i- and –an in the tagalog is determined not by the focus relation of the subject to the verb but by subclasses of the verb stem