Western Subanon language explained

Western Subanon
Also Known As:	Siocon Subanon
States:	Philippines
Region:	Western Mindanao
Speakers:	300,000
Date:	2018
Familycolor:	Austronesian
Fam2:	Malayo-Polynesian
Fam3:	Philippine
Fam4:	Greater Central Philippine
Fam5:	Subanen
Iso3:	suc
Glotto:	west2811
Glottorefname:	Western Subanen

Western Subanon (also known as Siocon Subanon or simply Subanon) is an Austronesian language belonging Subanen branch of the Greater Central Philippine subgroup. It is spoken by c. 300,000 people in the southwestern part of the Zamboanga Peninsula region of Mindanao.

Distribution and dialects

The Western Subanon speech area includes the villages Malayal, Lintangan, Lanuti, and Limpapa in the municipality of Sibuco, and parts of Siocon, Baliguian, Labason, Surabay, and Ipil, all located in the Zamboanga Peninsula region. The dialects are Siocon and Western Kolibugan (Western Kalibugan).^[1]

Phonology

Western Subanon has 15 native consonants.^{[2] [3]}

Consonants

Consonant phonemes! colspan="2"

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
	voiced	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Fricative			pronounced as /link/			pronounced as /link/
Nasal		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Lateral			pronounced as /link/
Semivowel				pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/

Vowels

Western Subanon has five vowels.^[3]

Monophthongs!! Front! Central! Back

High	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Mid	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Low		pronounced as /link/

The diphthongs of Western Subanon are pronounced as //au//, pronounced as //ua//, pronounced as //io//, pronounced as //oi//, pronounced as //ai//, and pronounced as //ia//.

Grammar

Western Subanon has a typical Philippine-type voice system. Unlike most other Philippine languages, it only has three voice categories.^{[4] [5]}

Voice affixes

			non-volitional
				irrealis
Actor voice	‹um›‹in› mig-	‹um› mog-	miko-	moko-
Patient voice	‹in› pig-	-on pog-	mi-	mo-
Goal voice	‹in› -an pig- -an	-an pog- -an	ki- -an	ko- -an

Sample text

The chorus of the Western Subanon song "" 'Let's plant' is shown.

Further reading

• Book: Hall, William C. . Aspects of Western Subanon Formal Speech . 1987 . Summer Institute of Linguistics . en.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Subanon, Western . 2022-05-28 . Ethnologue . en.
2. Web site: Estioca. Sharon Joy. Subanon (Spring 2015). Language Documentation Training Center. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. 2 September 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20190410150158/http://ling.hawaii.edu/ldtc/languages/subanon. 10 April 2019.
3. Bulalang . Sharon . 2018 . Two Patterns of /a/ and /o/ Alternation in Subanon . Oceanic Linguistics . 57 . 2 . 289–302 . 10.1353/ol.2018.0013. 149975971 .
4. Hall . William C. . 1969 . A Classification of Siocon Subanon Verbs . Anthropological Linguistics . 11 . 7 . 209–215 . 30029228.
5. Hauk . Bryn . Functions of the Subanon mo-Prefix: Evidence from Paradigms and Argument Structure . 2019 . Oceanic Linguistics . 85 . 2 . 257–291 . 10.1353/ol.2019.0009.