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.