A comparative analysis of Eskayan and Boholano-Visayan (Cebuano) phonotactics: implications for the origins of Eskayan lexemes
Date
2015
Authors
Kelly, Piers
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Asia-Pacific Linguistics
Abstract
When the Eskaya community first came to light on the island of Bohol in the southern
Philippines, much speculation centred on the group’s origins but there was no detailed
analysis of their unusual language and script. Eskaya people consider their language to
have been the deliberate creation of a legendary ancestor, a narrative that is consistent
with the fact that Eskayan appears to be a near total relexification of Boholano-Visayan,
the dominant language of Bohol. This paper outlines the phonotactic differences between
the two languages, revealing that Boholano-Visayan native roots are disyllabic and take
the form C (G) V (G)/(C) while Eskayan roots range from one to five syllables with the
form C (C)/(G) V (G)/C (C). This structural discrepancy is less stark when borrowed
terms are taken into consideration. In effect, the legendary creator did not confabulate
new terms from scratch but relied on the nativised structures of Spanish and English
words as lexical models.
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Keywords
phonotactics, syllables, artificial languages, ISO 639-3 codes: esy, ceb
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Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (JSEALS) 8 (2015):iii-xiv
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Journal article
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