NAGBU, S. L.

Lingg 121

Written Report: Cunanan’s Ang Dialect Area ng Bikol-Sorsogon

Cunanan’s article, written entirely in Filipino, dealt with the Sorsogon dialect area of the Bikol
language. While there are many researches that already undertook the Bikol languages in the past, none of
them solely studied the scope of the Bikol-Sorsogon and its varieties. Her objective then is to look into
the internal relationship of the varieties of the language in Sorsogon. This serves as a firsthand survey of
the area, but she notes that this is not yet complete and she wants to study more aspects of the dialect area
in the future.

In her introduction, she discussed a basic but straight to the point definition of dialectology.
Dialectology, she said, is the study of dialects, which is also primarily based on its geographical location.
Not only is it contrasting differences in sound, stress, vocabulary, and structure, but it also compares its
similarities to better understand its relationship with other dialects.

In order to differentiate what is a dialect and what is not, an arbitrary measurement called “mutual
intelligibility” is used. Basically, when two people converse with two different variations of the same
language, and they can understand each other to a degree, these variations are called “dialect”. For
example

In the examples below, she differentiated three aspects of grammar between Maynila and
Mindoro, Laguna, and Batangas

1) Sound structure where it differentiates with a glottal stop and stress placement:

gabi Maynila [ga’bi]

Mindoro [gab’ʔi]

2) Meaning where it became quite divergent but still somehow means the same fundamental sense
of “going through” something:

liban Maynila ‘hindi pagpasok sa opisina o eskuwela’

Laguna ‘tawid’

3) Sentence structure:

buksan mo Maynila buksan mo

Batangas buksi

She notes, however, that while mutual intelligibility is the utmost basis of recognizing whether
two ways of speaking are dialects or not, it is still not enough especially when accounting with what
McFarland calls as “dialect continuum”. In a dialect continuum below, one can see that from A to F, the
nearest dialect is bound to have a high chance of having mutual intelligibity.
 A B C D E F

However, when one takes into account farther locations like A and F, the variation becomes far
too great and thus, they will have little to no mutual intelligibity. This situation is what is usually known
as L-complex.

Not only is there a linguistic and geographic basis, it also has political and social grounds. For
example, in China, their varieties are considered one language because of social “oneness”, but in fact, it
is actually comprised of different dialects. In the case of the Philippines, Filipinos generally speak of
supposed languages like Waray, Cebuano, and Ilokano as “dialects” while Tagalog as the language of the
country. Because of such perceptions, some linguists use the neutral term “regional variety” or simply
“variety” since the term dialect seems to have a negative connotation. Cunanan primarily used the term
“variety” in this paper.

Moving from her introduction, she described the general information about the province of
Sorsogon. According to the 2010 census, the province has a population of almost 740,743. It is located on
the southern-most part of the Bikol peninsula, east of Masbate, and north of Cebu. The most important
point that Cunanan want to point out is that, as mentioned earlier, a language or a dialect’s geographical
location is also vital on the transmission of changes and variations that it can receive. Evidently, Sorsogon
is susceptible to change as it is surrounded with the three areas above. Because of this, it is observed that
the Northern Sorsogon is more Bikol, Eastern is more Waray, and the West is affected the most by
Masbateno. There is also an identity crisis within Sorsogon wherein the speakers identify themselves as
“Bikol” speakers, as some of them do not want to be included with the Bisayan group.

Ten locations or varieties in Sorsogon were scoped and studied. These are Pilar, Castilla,
Sorsogon (proper), Bacon, Gubat, Juban, Magallanes, Irosin, Sta. Magdalena, and Matnog. If one plots
these locations in the map, they can see that every area of Sorsogon, North, West, Internal, and South, are
focused, which is beneficial in strengthening her description of how location affects variation.

The interviewees were specified to be 20-81 years old that had lived for 14-52 years already in
the province to express more authenticity. She conducted her interview with an eliciting material that
consists of a 170 items already used in the past when she studied Irosin, Gubat, and Juban. Of the 170,
162 of these are words from the basic vocabulary that every languages seems to possess, such as body
parts and primary verbs, and oddly enough, 18 items were phrases and sentences, which when combined
does not add up to 170. Unfortunately, only 135 of these words were used because of the confusion on the
usage of semantics such as personal pronouns and semantic expansion. She also did not include
inflections due to the lack of data.

Before she went to her data, she outlined first the history of the subgrouping of the whole Bikol
language, including Sorsogon, by past researchers. Anderson & Lynch (1956) provided only four
subgroups of Bikol: (1) Coastal Peninsular, (2) Timog Catanduanes, (3) Hilagang Catanduanes, and (4)
Interior Bikol. However, she notes how the Sorsogon varieties were not included in the research, and that
their research was only based on phonemic inventory. Epstein (1967) diversified these subgroups and
added 2 more specific subgroups, namely Rinconda and Sorsogon. Coastal Peninsular diversified into
Standard Bikol, and Gitna at Kanlurang Albay. No basis was mentioned in grouping these subgroups.
 After this point, researchers finally included the Sorsogon varieties in differentiating subgroups.
The results were generally more or the less the same, but the point she stresses here is that not all varieties
found in Sorsogon lie on the same subgroup. This means that while all of them are situated in the
province, they are definitely not the same variants and some may even belong to a different language. To
illustrate, only focusing on the Sorsogon varieties, Mintz, McFarland, and Lobel organized them
accordingly in the table below.

Mintz (1973) McFarland (1974) McFarland (1983) Lobel (2000)

Standard Bikol – Coastal na mga dialect Bikol Language – Hilagang Coastal na
Bacon and Magallanes – Bacon, Castilla, Pilar, Castilla, Bacon, Standard Bikol – Bacon
Magallanes, Pilar Magallanes and Magallanes
Albay - Pilar Timog Coastal and Inland
na Bikol - Pilar
Sorsogon Timog na mga dialect Central Bisaya Bisacol
1) Hilagang Sorsogon 1) Hilagang Sorsogon Language – 1) Gitnang Sorsogon –
– Sorsogon and Juban – Sorsogon and Juban 1) Sorsogon Masbate – Sorsogon, Castilla, Juban
2) Timog Sorsogon – 2) Timog Sorsogon – Sorsogon and Juban 2) Timog Sorsogon –
Gubat, Sta. Gubat, Irosin, Sta. 2) Sorsogon Waray – Gubat, Sta. Magdalena,
Magdalena, Matnog, Magdalena, Matnog Irosin, Gubat, Sta. Matnog, Irosin
Irosin Magdalena, Matnog

Based on the table, these researches agree that Sorsogon, Juban, Gubat, Irosin, Matnog, and Sta.
Magdalena belong on the same major subgroup, which I would call as the Sorsogon/Visayas group as
they are located nearer the Visayan area. On the other hand, Bacon and Magallanes belong to the similar
subgroup, while Pilar might or might not be included, this subgroup is more Albay/Coastal Group as it is
more situated North and West. Castilla is a special case as it is not included in Mintz, included in the
same subgroup as Bacon and Magallanes for McFarland, and oddly included in the Bisacol subgroup in
Lobel. One of her objectives is now to then classify more appropriately what includes in a subgroup and
what does not.

Her data consists of isoglosses maps, which details the boundary where words from the 135-word
list differentiates and clusters, numerical tables showing the similarity in form and the isolects (or
differences in form), and her phonological patterns showing her observations of these varieties.

The first was the analysis of the isogloss maps which consist of all the words in her eliciting
material mapped to show the variation. Of all the words, she found 12 patterns of isoglosses in the data.
Some forms were different from the others, like in Pilar having the form [bu’nay] for egg where it is
[sa’lag] in the others, and some forms adds another form like in Juban having two forms that exist at the
same time for the word ‘twins’, [kam’bal] and [ka’ru:ha].

To summarize all the maps, the varieties are grouped based on how they behave. One is that Pilar
displays a very divergent characteristic wherein words exhibit entirely different forms. Second, Bacon
and Magallanes tend to possess the same phonological structure but also differs from other varieties.
Third, Gubat, Irosin, Sta. Magdalena, and Matnog are also similar like in the second point. These three
form three groups of isoglosses; (1) Pilar being isolated to its own group, (2) Bacon and Magallanes being
the second, and the third consisting of (3) Gubat, Irosin, Sta. Magdalena, and Matnog. If one plots these
groups in the map, one can see that the third group is nearer to the Visayan area, Pilar situated in the far
North-West, and Magallanes and Bacon oddly situated far from each other. Additionaly, Castilla,
Sorsogon, and Jubat tend to overlap but are not consistent enough to conclude that they form the same
group. Thus, they are “grouped” together as the fourth group in the sense that they are the remainders.
Conclusions are inferred after the next observations.

The second data shows numerical tables detailing the similarities and isolects of these varieties.
Isogloss Group 2 have 73% similarity with each other, Group 3 have 66-82%, and the three ungrouped
varieties being 73-75%. It is odd that Cunanan did not explicitly group the last varieties as the fourth
isogloss group as they have over 73-75% similarity, but considering her reasons, there might be
something more other than just pure numbers in these three varieties that prompted her to not group them
accordingly.

On the other hand, the differences were outlined specially to show how divergent Pilar is, having
over a large percentage of 65% vs. Gubat, Sta. Magdalena, Irosin, Castilla, Sorsogon, Magallanes, and
Matnog. In addition, Group 2 also have 60% divergence vs. Gubat, Sta. Magalena, and Matnog.

In comparison with the past studies in subgrouping, she displayed how similar her findings are
with her observations above with very slight differences in the table below.

Mintz McFarland McFarland Lobel Cunanan

Bacon and Bacon, Bacon, Bacon and Bacon and
Magallanes Magallanes, Pilar, Magallanes, Pilar, Magallanes Magallanes
Castilla Castilla
Pilar N/A N/A Pilar Pilar
Gubat, Sta. Gubat, Sta. Gubat, Sta. Gubat, Sta. Gubat, Sta.
Magdalena, Magdalena, Magdalena, Magdalena, Magdalena,
Matnog, Irosin Matnog, Irosin Matnog, Irosin Matnog, Irosin Matnog, Irosin
Sorsogon and Sorsogon and Sorsogon and Sorsogon, Juban, Sorsogon, Juban,
Juban Juban Juban Castilla Castilla

Of all the past researches, she wholeheartedly agrees with Lobel with the subgroupings. The four
groups of isoglosses parallel exactly the same, with Pilar excluded from the others. Castilla, which was
the special undecided case mentioned earlier, is concluded to be in the same subgroup with Sorsogon and
Juban. Because of these variations from one another, Cunanan concludes that the Bikol-Sorsogon
varieties are in L-complex.

Lastly, she outlines some phonological patterns. First, the stress and length in the Sorsogon
varieties are phonemic. Second, insertion or deletion occurred, but it was not mentioned what came first.
Third, there is a vowel and consonant change generally shown to be the cause of weakening and
articulatory change. Lastly, metathesis is also evident. She also turns on some varieties as they possess
special features unlike the other varieties. Our very divergent Pilar is no exception, with the existence of
[ə] and [L] sounds, nonexistence of /h/ (although in some cases there is), and metathesis particular to the
glottal stop. Castilla is also shown to be similar in Tagalog, having words that is exactly the same with the
language.
These findings represent how location, in addition with the historical and political situation, can
affect change. Trade and transportation from Manila only cuts until Legazpi, which implies that the
Sorsogon area is less susceptible to change from the North and more to the South. This is generally the
reason why Sorsogon is more Visayan than Luzon, although as mentioned earlier, they want to have a
more “Bikolano” identity, which goes to show how they value their language in spite of the clear
differences.
Cunanan finally recommends to study the municipality of Prieto Diaz, Casiguran, Bulan,
Bulusan, and especially Donsol, as they were not included in the data but were mentioned in the past
researchers. She also wanted to research more on Bacon and Magallanes, because even though both of
them are far from each other, they still possess undoubtful similarities. Lastly, since this is about the
internal relations, it is also vital to study the external relations as most of the innovations in the varieties
are implied to be the cause of outside intervention.

Reference used:

Cunanan, F. (2015). Ang Dialect Area ng Bikol-Sorsogon: Isang Paunang Suri. University of the
Philippines Diliman.