Tawbuid language

The Tawbuid language is a language spoken by Tau-buid Mangyans in the province of Mindoro in the Philippines. It is divided into eastern and western dialects. The Bangon Mangyans also speak the western dialect of Tawbuid.

Tau-buid (or Tawbuid) Mangyans live in Oriental Mindoro, in the municipalities of Socorro, Pinamalayan and Gloria; in Occidental Mindoro, in the municipalities of Sablayan and Calintaan. They are known for smoking pipes, starting as a child.

Phonology

Western Tawbuid

Vowels

               i      ɨ       u

               e              ɔ

                      a

Consonants

            bilabial    labiodental  alveolar   palatal   velar      	
plosive      b    p                   d     t              g   k

fricative                 f           s

nasal        m                        n                    ŋ  

lateral                               l

flap                                  ɾ

approximant  w                                      y

Historical Comparison

Comparison with related languages show a gradual loss of /k/ > /h/ > /Ø/. e.g.
Tagalog: ako, > Buhid: aho > Tawbuid: au ‘I’
kami > hami > ami ‘we’

There is a residual /k/ in the 1st person singular, in the affix /ak-/, usually shortened in speech to /k-/. E.g. kadasug kban (or akban) ‘I will arrive.’

Glottals

It will be noticed that there are no glottal phonemes, either /h/ or /ʔ/.
The glottal stop /ʔ/ is absent as a phoneme in Tawbuid, though may be the realization of boundary between adjacent identical vowels. Normally though, in connected speech, two adjacent vowels are either merged to form a lengthened vowel or differentiated by stress. e.g.

fakafanyuun ‘love’ may be pronounced /fakafanyu'ʔun/ or /fakafan'yu:n/
fagfanyaan ‘waiting place’ /fakfanya'ʔan/ or /fakfan'ya:n/
naali ‘dug’ /na'ali/ or /na'ʔali/

Notice that in the above, the stress precedes the glottal, whereas without a glottal, the stress is in the normal position for that particular stress pattern.
Vowels following /i/ and /u/ offer different interpretations, as to whether a linking /y/ or /w/ is present.
siu or siyu ‘elbow’
tua or tuwa grammatical marker

Assimilation

There is a remarkable absence of assimilation at the point of articulation of nasals with following sounds. e.g.

lanbung ‘shade, clothing’ (rather than */lambung/) (Cf. Tagalog: ‘lambung’)
sangdaw ‘animal trap’ (not */sandaw/)
angru ‘dried bulu (kind of bamboo)’ (not */anru/)
anbul ‘taken, died’ (not */ambul/)

Description of phonemes

/i/ close front spread
occurs syllable initial, middle and final
idu ‘dog’
lino ‘lake, sea, body of water’
katsi ‘now, today’

/e/ half close front spread
established as a phoneme in contrast with /i/ by minimal pairs
lili ‘said while tickling pig’
lele ‘tongue’
liplip ‘blink eyes, flash light’
leplep ‘tongue’
occurrence in similar environment:
seud ‘steam or boil to cook’
siun ‘right-hand side’

Historically this was most likely /ay/. It is a common occurrence in languages around the world, for /ay/ to become /e/, as in French and English. (Tagalog also exhibits this trend, with ‘may’ being pronounced /me/ in connected speech.) Comparison of Tawbuid with related languages shows this:
wase ‘axe’ Cf other dialects, including Alangan, Ilocano: ‘wasay’
sunge ‘horn’ Cf. Tagalog ‘sungay’
abe ‘winged bean’ Cf. Iraya ‘abay’.

Within Tawbuid, /ay/ and /e/ alternate with different grammatical forms of the same word.
sable ‘cross a hill’
sablayan ‘the place where you arrive after crossing a hill’
-duge ‘a long time’ (root word)
kadugean or kadugayan ‘elapsed time’

/a/ open central unrounded
Vowel which occurs in syllable initial, mid and final positions.
amlung ‘species of vine’
ban ‘species of tree’
fana ‘arrow’

/o/ half-open back rounded
established as a phoneme in contrast with /u/ by minimal pairs
biu ‘species of shell’
bio ‘eagle’
susu ‘breast’
soso ‘rinsed nami’

As with /e/, this is probably a historical development of /aw/. A similar process occurred in English and French.
o ‘you (singular)’ Cf. Buhid ‘haw’.
ano ‘fan palm’ Cf. Tagalog ‘anahaw’
fiso ‘bush knife’ Cf. Alangan, Indonesian, ‘pisaw’

/u/ close back rounded
syllable initial, middle and final
u ‘finger nail, toe nail’
ugak ‘crow’
fagut ‘tame’
alu ‘mortar’

/ɨ/ close central unrounded
syllable initial middle and final
vtv ‘immediate, subsequent’
gvnas ‘pull leaves off stalk’

In orthography, letter ‘v’ is used. In the 1950s when the Reeds started writing the language, that was a convenient (and unused) letter on the typewriter. It is the least frequent vowel, (> 1%) and in fact the least frequent phoneme (> 0.5%) in the language.

Mostly occurs with /a/ or /ɨ/ in adjacent syllable. In all but one word (tibanglvn) /a/ and /ɨ/ are the only vowels used. (One exception noted: the name of a river near Tundayaw is Guribvy.)

/b/ voiced bilabial plosive.
syllable initial and final
e.g. bio ‘eagle’
kalub ‘fall face down’

/p/ voiceless bilabial plosive.
environment: syllable initial (but rare word initial) and final
variants:

[p] voiceless unaspirated bilabial plosive,
environment: syllable initial
patuy ‘compressed lump of soaked nami’
paras ‘small mouse species’
agipan ‘scorpion’
apalya ‘ampalaya, bitter gourd’
napsug ‘full, satisfied with food’

[pʰ] voiceless slightly aspirated bilabial plosive
environment: word final
tap ‘number’

/p/ is established as a phoneme in contrast with /f/ by the following:
there is at least one minimal pair:
tapi ‘count (imperative)’, from root ‘tap’ plus suffix -i
tafi ‘slash, chop mark from a knife’

/p/ is in contrastive distribution with /f/, under the following circumstances:
· /f/ is never syllable-final, but /p/ can be.
· /f/ cannot be followed by /ɨ/, but /p/ frequently is. (e.g. /yapvs/ ‘skin boil’, /yafus/ ‘cockroach’)

/d/ voiced alveolar plosive.
syllable initial and final.
dufa ‘armspan’
galiad ‘have a cut under one’s toe’
baladbad ‘woodpecker’
Realised as [t] before voiceless consonants, most frequently in the verb form CVd-root-an.
/kadkafanyu'an/ > [katkafanyu'an] ‘loving one another’

/t/ voiceless alveolar plosive
environment: syllable initial and final

variants:
[t] voiceless unaspirated alveolar plosive
environment: syllable initial
take ‘arm’
makatu ‘able’
[tʰ] voiceless slightly aspirated (or released without aspiration) plosive
environment: word final
mabiat ‘heavy’
meut ‘vegetation’

/g/ voiced velar plosive
environment: syllable initial and final, or initial cluster.
gewan ‘come here’
ragbas ‘cut grass’
salug ‘floor’
realised as [k] before voiceless consonants, for example in the verb prefix g-, and prefixes tag-, fag-.
/gted/ > [kted] ‘holding’
/'gfili/ > ['kfili] ‘choosing’
/tagti'ug/ > [takti'ug] ‘the one who is sleeping’

/k/ voiceless velar plosive
environment: syllable initial and final
[k] voiceless unaspirated bilabial plosive,
environment: syllable initial
kesug ‘love, cherish’
nasuksuan ‘hidden’

[kʰ] voiceless slightly aspirated plosive
environment: word final
sinduk ‘peck’
atsik ‘click’

There is a tendency for the initial /k/ to be lost in Tawbuid compared to similar words in related languages.
e.g. Tag. kasalanan > Tb. asalanan ‘sin’
Tag. Kinarawan > Tb. Inaruan ‘river name’
Tag. katay > Tb. ate ‘kill (root word)’

/f/ voiceless labiodental fricative
environment: syllable initial only. See comments on /p/ for contrastive features.
faglon ‘second most recently born child in a family’
fatfat ‘thrash around’
Rare in Austronesian languages. Historically related to Tagalog and other Philippine languages. /p/. e.g.
afuy ‘fire’ (Tagalog: ‘apoy’)
fana ‘arrow’ (Tagalog: ‘pana’)
fag grammatical linker (other Mangyan languages except Buhid, ‘pag’)

/s/ voiceless alveolar fricative
can occur in all syllable positions, and in the initial consonant cluster /st/. The affricate /ts/ is treated as a unit rather than two successive consonants.

/m/ bilabial nasal
can occur in all syllable positions.

/n/ dental nasal
environment: syllable initial and final and syllabic
nanan ‘cooked sweet potato’
ntama [n'tama] ‘cooked’

/ŋ/ velar nasal
environment: syllable initial and final and syllabic

ngenge ‘baby, youngest child in family’
song ‘cough’
ngurang [ŋ'guraŋ] ‘matured, grew up’

/l/ voiced alveolar palatalized lateral
environment: syllable initial and final
laman ‘so that, in order to’
menal ‘bitter, astringent tasting’

/R/ voiced alveolar flap
environment: syllable initial and (rarely) final
ria ‘ginger’
makerker ‘shoddy’

/w/ voiced bilabial approximant
environment: syllable initial and final
waswas ‘chop with knife’
taw ‘person’
madaylaw ‘tiring’

/y/ voiced palatal approximant
environment: syllable initial and final
yukyuk ‘kind of spirit’
sumyu ‘finger, toe’
advy ‘expression of pain’

Stress patterns
Primary stress in Tawbuid is either final or penultimate. Most words are stressed unpredictably, and in some speakers, all syllables seem to be equally stressed. Modification in stress occurs in affective speech (see below).
Some syllable patterns have predictable stress. A word containing two adjacent syllables with CVC patterns are stressed on the second of those two syllables, whether final or not.

/nabag'bag/ ‘attacked with knife’
/bulat'lat/ ‘species of grass’
/fag'lon/ ‘second most recently born child’
/fan'dagum/ ‘charm made of resin’
/kafan'donan/ ‘night is falling’

Words with two identical CVC patterns interrupted by /-ar-/ or /-al-/ are also stressed on the second of those two CVC syllables.
/falung'fung/ ‘sapling’
/balang'bang/ ‘thigh’
Where the final and penultimate syllables are open, and the vowels are the same, the stress is penultimate.
susu ‘breast’
lele ‘tongue’
langipi ‘wasp species’
gigi ‘dent’
soso ‘rinsed nami’
vtv ‘immediate’
But when the vowels are different, stress can occur unpredictably.
final: /nla'fi/ ‘flattened’
penultimate: /'lafi/ ‘shoulder’
final: /a'fuy/ ‘fire’
penultimate /'kafuy/ ‘cry noiselessly in sleep’

A root word can change its stress when affixes are added, because affixes carry their own inherent stress.
/'sadi/ ‘one’ (penultimate)
/ma'sadi/ ‘united’ (penultimate)
/fagmasadi'un/ ‘unity’ (final)
/namasadi'an/ ‘agreement’ (final)
In affective speech (utterances in which the speaker wishes to convey emotion), lengthening may change stress:
/na'taw/ ‘what?’ may become /:na:taw/ when said with rising pitch on the first syllable and low pitch on the second. This indicates acute surprise.

Secondary stress and tertiary stress.
In words of more than three syllables there is a secondary and even a tertiary stress.
/²fagma³balyan¹anun/ ‘power’
/³fag²kedkesu¹ganun/ ‘mutual love’

Accent:
Within the Western Tawbuid region, there are distinctive accents as well as vocabulary preferences. Taking the rebuke lag katanya ‘don’t do that’:

Balani: mid, mid, mid-to-high rising, low.
Lagutay: mid-low falling, mid, mid-low falling, mid-low falling
Anawin: mid, mid, mid-semitone higher, mid.

A rebuke or any utterance conveying a negative emotion is frequently said with lips rounded throughout.

Syllable patterns
V
monosyllabic words are: e, o, u
Some words beginning with a vowel have a V syllable initial pattern.
alu, ogo, umu, vtv ‘pestle’, ‘water-skater’, ‘royal jelly’, ‘immediate, subsequent’ V-CV
emad, ifag ‘louse’, ‘sister/brother-in-law’ V-CVC

C – in the case of the completed aspect prefix /n-/
ndasug ‘arrived’ C-CV-CVC

VC
agbvt, ‘great, large’ VC-CVC
amlung ‘species of vine’
ekwan ‘share of harvest’

CVC
ban ‘species of tree’ CVC
dot ‘species of snake’
tap ‘number’
faglon ‘second youngest child’ CVC-CVC
fadeg ‘field’ CV-CVC

CCV
ste ‘here’ CCV
glo, gbul ‘going’, ‘getting’ CCV
tsiuy ‘there’ CCV-VC

CVC with semivowels
inday ‘which?’ VC-CVC
araw ‘forest’ V-CVC
fuyfurit ‘species of bat’ CVC-CV-CVC
baybay ‘plentiful’ (root) CVC-CVC

References

External links

• Mangyan Heritage Center