Morphological and Lexical Variations of Tagalog Nominal and Pronominal Systems in Cavite

The study identified and described the morphological and lexical variations of Tagalog nominals and pronominals spoken in the province of Cavite. Using mixed method of research and a modified survey questionnaire through a 160-item lexical test (130 items for nominals and 30 items for pronominals) it analyzed the nominal types (concrete, abstract-state, comitative, reciprocal, instigator, body parts, and other common nominals), and the pronominal types (nominals, ordinals, deictics, and demonstratives). Involving a total of 2,070 participants from the 17 municipalities and six cities in Cavite, the participants were grouped into young-aged, middle-aged, and old-aged with 30 members for each cohort. Results revealed that morphologically, Tagalog-Cavite follows the standard Tagalog morphemes (derivational affixation) particularly for comitative nouns ( ‘ka- ’), reciprocal nouns (‘mag-’), and instigator nouns (‘taga-’). The same observation was noted for ordinal pronouns with the morphemes (‘pang-’) and (‘ika-’). Specifically, structures like N + suffix, V + suffix, prefix + N, prefix + V, and prefix + N + suffix were commonly used by the Tagalog-Cavite speakers. Overall, Tagalog-Cavite was found to be lexically exclusive in some municipalities, both for nominals and pronominals, but generally lexically encoded as the standard Tagalog. Such findings signify that though different speakers use Tagalog-Cavite in different ways, this does not entail a significant change in the meanings attached to these words.