Northern Luzon languages


The Northern Luzon languages are one of the few established large groups within Philippine languages. These are mostly located in and around the Cordillera Central of northern Luzon in the Philippines. Among its major languages are Ilokano, Pangasinan and Ibanag

Internal classification

Lawrence Reid divides the over thirty Northern Luzon languages into five branches: the Northeastern Luzon, Cagayan Valley and Meso-Cordilleran subgroups, further Ilokano and Arta as gruop-level isolate branches.

Phonology

Reid has reconstructed the Proto-Northern Luzon sound system as follows, with phonemic stress:
FrontCentralBack
Close*i*ɨ*u
Open*a

The sound inventory of Proto-Northern Luzon shows no innovations from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian that would set it apart from other Philippine languages. There are however two phonological innovations that characterize the Northern Luzon languages:
Lexical innovations only found in Northern Luzon languages include: *dutdut "feather, body hair", *kəməl "squeeze", *lətəg "swell", *yəgyəg "earthquake", *takdəg "stand", *ʔubət "buttocks". Semantic shifts are observed e.g. in *ʔatəd "give" and *laman "wild pig".

Ethnic groups