More than words: A documentation and a morphological analysis of an indigenous language in the Philippines

Abstract

More than words are stories to be told. Stories tell a lot about people's thoughts, experiences, and practices which in turn speak about people's language, identity, and cultural heritage. The present study deals with the documentation and analysis of Mag-Antsi, the native language of Ayta Mag-Antsi indigenous people in the Philippines. With the aging population as its remaining speakers, Mag-Antsi is far from being sustainable. Using in-depth interviews, Ayta beliefs, practices, and traditions were documented and a word list of 376 Mag-Antsi words with varied lexical categories was constructed. A morphological analysis of Mag-Antsi was done to capture the grammatical structure of Mag-Antsi words in the oral narratives. Ten cultural short stories were also developed from the oral narratives to document and preserve the distinct culture of Ayta Mag-Antsi. This study found that the morphological structure of Mag-Antsi language has some similarities with Filipino which is marked by inflections and a unique orthography. This study also shows practical implications to the use of mother tongue in the academic setting and to language preservation.

Morphological processes in Sanzari Boro

“…The languages of the world are classified morphological typologically in different types such as synthetic, agglutinating, isolating, and fusional. Abiog & David (2020) have highlighted different grammatical structures of indigenous languages. According to Brahma (2016), Boro is an agglutinating language.…”