Last Updated: 2020-07-27
Background
Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Western Malayo-Polynesian / Meso Philippine / Central Philippine / Bisayan / Central / Peripheral
- Hiligaynon, also known as Ilonggo, is spoken in the Philippines. It is most widely spoken in the regions of Western Visayas and Soccsksargen.
Phonology
Consonants
- Wolfenden (1971) and Casperson (2010) both include /f/ and /v/ (although introduced through loanwords) in their phonemic inventory, while Motus (1971) claims they are allophones of /p/ and /b/, respectively, and are only used by some speakers as a sign of prestige (p. ix). Therefore, I have opted to omit /f/ and /v/ in the analysis below.
- Casperson (2010) reports an alveolar place for /t/, /d/, /n/, and /s/, but other documentation suggests that they are dental (Wolfenden 1971, 17–20; Motus 1971, ix).
- The affricates /c/ and /ʝ/ appear in loanwords (Wolfenden 1971, 19).
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Dental
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Alveolar
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Palatal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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p b
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t̪ d̪
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k ɡ
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ʔ
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Fricatives
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s̪
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n̪
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ŋ
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Taps
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ɾ
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Approximants
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l
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j
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w
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.
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Vowels
- /e/ and /o/ are borrowed from Spanish and English, but only exist in Hiligaynon as allophones of /i/ and /u/, respectively (Motus 1971, ix). Therefore, ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ will be transcribed to /i/ and /u/, respectively.
- In some orthographies, an acute accent (´) on a vowel marks stress, which is phonemic in Hiligaynon (ibid.). However, stress is not relevant for the purposes of this project, so accented vowels will be transcribed to their plain counterparts.
- Possible Hiligaynon diphthongs include /ai/ and /au/ (Manzano and Sadural 2016, 43). Because they can also be interpreted as sequences of independent vowels rather than diphthongs, however, they will not be accounted for in the rules (Manzano and Sadural 2016, 43).
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Front
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Central
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Back
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High
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i
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u
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Low
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a
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Alphabet
- The glottal stop can be written with either ⟨q⟩ or an apostrophe depending on which orthographic convention is being followed. Both variations are included here.
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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a
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/a/
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b
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/b/
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k
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/k/
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d
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/d̪/
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g
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/ɡ/
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h
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/h/
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i
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/i/
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l
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/l/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n̪/
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p
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/p/
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q
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/ʔ/
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’
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/ʔ/
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r
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/ɾ/
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s
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/s̪/
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t
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/t̪/
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u
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/u/
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w
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/w/
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y
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/j/
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Digraph
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ng
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/ŋ/
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Lenition Rules
- After nasal place assimilation occurs, the consonant following the nasal may be deleted (Wolfenden 1971, 28).
- Stem-final /d̪/ becomes the tap [ɾ] when certain suffixes are added (Wolfenden 1971, 29).
Misc. Rules
- Glottal stops are predictably inserted preceding word-initial vowels (Wolfenden 1971, 13).
- When a suffix is added, a vowel may be deleted from a stem-final syllable, thus causing two consonants to become adjacent. The consonants may then metathesize (Wolfenden 1971, 27).
- Nasals may assimilate to the place of the following consonant (ibid.).
References
Manzano, Diane, and Samantha Jade Sadural. 2016. “Meron O Mayroon: An Exploratory Study on Hiligaynon and Tagalog ‘Diphthongs’.” Philippine Computing Journal Dedicated Issue on Natural Language Processing XI (1): 37–44.
Motus, Cecile L. 1971. Hiligaynon Dictionary. Pali Language Texts: Philippines. University of Hawai’i Press.