Morphological Analysis of Tagalog, Hiligaynon, and Cebuano Languages

Tagalog, Hiligaynon, and Cebuano are major Philippine languages with shared Austronesian roots but distinct morphological characteristics. This study examined the affixes used in Hiligaynon and Cebuano—both part of the Bisayan language group—and analyzed how these affixes influenced the meanings of the root words to which they were attached. Tagalog served as the baseline language for comparison. The primary objective was to identify and compare the morphological structures of affixed nouns, adjectives, and verbs across the three languages. Using a qualitative analytical design, data were gathered from the book Hambingang Wika by Aceron, which presents morphological comparisons among Philippine languages. The study focused on selected affixes to observe patterns of morphological shifts and semantic changes. A comparative matrix was used to analyze affixation and its effects on word meaning. Findings revealed that while many affixed root words shared similar structures across the three languages, notable differences emerged in the usage of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. For instance, the noun-forming affix (mangga)han in Tagalog becomes ka(mangga)han in both Cebuano and Hiligaynon. The word (ani)han transforms into ting(ani) in Cebuano and ti(alani) in Hiligaynon. In adjective formation, Tagalog's ma(bait) corresponds to (buot)an in both Bisayan languages. Verb affixes such as i- were consistently used across the three, e.g., i(hagis) in Tagalog becomes i(labay) in Cebuano and i(haboy) in Hiligaynon. The study contributes to understanding the morphological diversity of Philippine languages and highlights the need for further comparative study across other parts of speech. These findings can serve as a foundation for developing mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) teaching materials tailored to different linguistic regions.