The Proto-Philippine language is a reconstructed ancestral

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

of the

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (languages ...

, a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian languages which includes all languages within the Philippines (except for the

Sama–Bajaw languages The Sama–Bajaw languages are a well established group of languages spoken by the Sama-Bajau peoples of the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. They are mainly spoken on Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago between Borneo and Mindanao. Language ...

) as well as those within the northern portions of Sulawesi in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

.Llamzon, Teodoro A
"Proto-Philippine Phonology."
In: ''Archipel'', volume 9, 1975. pp. 29-42.Zorc, R.D. (1986). "The genetic relationships of Philippine languages." In Geraghty, P., Carrington, L. and Wurm, S.A. editors, ''FOCAL II: Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics''. C-94:147-173. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1986. Proto-Philippine is not directly attested to in any written work, but

linguistic reconstruction Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language ...

by the

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

has found regular similarities among languages that cannot be explained by coincidence or word-borrowing.

Classification

There have been three initial proposals in delineating the southern boundaries of the Philippine group: Northern

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java Isl ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, southern Philippines (encompassing southern Luzon all the way to

Mindanao Mindanao ( ) ( Jawi: مينداناو) is the second-largest island in the Philippines, after Luzon, and seventh-most populous island in the world. Located in the southern region of the archipelago, the island is part of an island group of t ...

and the Sulu Sea area), and northern Sulawesi in

. The earliest boundary was proposed by Esser (1938) between the Gorontalo languages and the Tomini languages of Sulawesi. While it was later found decades after (Himmelmann, 1990) that there are shared innovations between Philippine and Tomini languages, there are still uncertainties as to whether the latter do validly form one genetic group, or should be relegated as a mere geographic unit. Meanwhile, Charles (1974) in particular proposed that languages in

Sabah Sabah () is a state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah borders the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and the North Kalimantan province of Indonesia to the south. The Federal Territory ...

and of northern

Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the Malaysian state of Sabah to the northeast, ...

are descendants of this Proto-Philippines, which has subsequently garnered counter-evidences (Blust, 1974; Reid, 1982; Zorc, 1986). Lastly, there have been several proposals establishing southern Philippines as the boundary (Thomas & Healey, 1962; Dyen, 1965; Zorc, 1977; 1986) with the " Macro Meso-Philippine" and " Sangiric" as two primary branches. Walton (1979) and McFarland (1980) included the Sama-Bajau group as the third branch, but such has been later disputed as entirely separate directly under Malayo-Polynesian.

Features

Due to issues in the validity of a Philippine genetic group, and thus the existence of an ancestral Proto-Philippines language, most of its features particularly its phonology remain as proposals.

Phonology

Llamzon's reconstruction

Llamzon's (1975) proposed phonology of Proto-Philippines was derived from earlier reconstructions of Dempwolff's (1934-1938) works by Dyen (1947; 1951; 1953a; 1953b; 1953c). Used in this reconstruction were nine languages—

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Tagal ...

, Cebuano, Hiligaynon,

Waray Waray may refer to: * Waray people of the Philippines * Waray language, the fifth most spoken native language of the Philippines, spoken by the Waray people * Waray literature * Warray language Warray (Waray) was an Australian language spoken ...

, Bikol (Central?), Ilokano, Ibanag, Ifugao, and Kankanaey—with the rationale that the aforementioned have "relatively better structural description and vocabularies" than other related and geographically contiguous languages at that time. While his analysis focused on attested Proto-Austronesian phonemes which were retained in this Proto-Philippines, features that were lost or merged were not highlighted. Proto-phonemes *Z and *D were restricted to medial positions, and were not retained in any of the languages. The proto-phonemes *j and *R are not preserved as such in any Philippine language: *j became either *g or *d (e.g. *púsəj became Ilocano ''púsəg'',

''púsod''), whereas *R shifted to *r (e.g. in Ilokano), *l (e.g. in Pangasinan), *g (e.g. in

) or *y (e.g. in Kapampangan). Proto-Philippines

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English ...

*ə often merged with other vowels (e.g. /u/ in Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray; /a/ in Ibanag, /i/ in Tagalog), but is retained in a diverse range of Philippine languages (e.g. Gaddang, Kinaray-a, Maranao,

Maguindanao Maguindanao (, Maguindanaon: ''Prubinsya nu Magindanaw''; Iranun'': Perobinsia a Magindanao''; tl, Lalawigan ng Maguindanao) was a province of the Philippines located in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). From 2014 t ...

, Rinconada Bikol, Palawano), and in southern dialects of Ilokano.

Paz' reconstruction

Another notable proposal is by Paz (1981) who conducted a bottom-up approach by reconstructing using her own symbols. Paz revisits two types of proto-Austronesian L as part of her reconstruction (l, l̥), which makes it distinct from other reconstructions. In comparison to Llamzon, Paz presents five diphthongs instead.

Lexicon

Below is a table comparing core vocabulary from modern Philippine languages in relation to the follow Proto-Philippine innovations. Note that the accented vowels (e.g. á) under Proto-Philippine indicate the stress, while q represents glottal stop. Below are selected animal and plant names in Proto-Philippine from the ''Austronesian Comparative Dictionary''.

Animal names

Plant names

References

External links

Philippine etyma file cards
by R. David Zorc {{Language histories Philippine Languages of the Philippines