There have been three initial proposals in delineating the southern boundaries of the Philippine group: Northern Borneo in Malaysia, southern Philippines, and northern Sulawesi in Indonesia. The earliest boundary was proposed by Esser between the Gorontalo languages and the Tomini languages of Sulawesi. While it was later found decades after that there are shared innovations between Philippine and Tomini languages, there are still uncertainties as to whether the latter do validly form one genetic group, or should be relegated as a mere geographic unit. Meanwhile, Charles in particular proposed that languages in Sabah and of northern Sarawak are descendants of this Proto-Philippines, which has subsequently garnered counter-evidences. Lastly, there have been several proposals establishing southern Philippines as the boundary with the "Macro Meso-Philippine" and "Sangiric" as two primary branches. Walton and McFarland included the Sama-Bajau group as the third branch, but such has been later disputed as entirely separate directly under Malayo-Polynesian.
Features
Due to issues in the validity of a Philippine genetic group, and thus the existence of an ancestral Proto-Philippines language, most of its features particularly its phonology remain as proposals.
Llamzon's proposed phonology of Proto-Philippines was derived from earlier reconstructions of Dempwolff's works by Dyen. Used in this reconstruction were nine languages—Tagalog, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Bikol, Ilokano, Ibanag, Ifugao, and Kankanaey—with the rationale that the aforementioned have "relatively better structural description and vocabularies" than other related and geographically contiguous languages at that time. While his analysis focused on attested Proto-Austronesian phonemes which were retained in this Proto-Philippines, features that were lost or merged were not highlighted. Proto-phonemes *Z and *D were restricted to medial positions, and were not retained in any of the languages. The proto-phonemes *j and *R are not preserved as such in any Philippine language: *j became either *g or *d, whereas *R shifted to *r, *l, *g or *y.
Front
Central
Back
Close
*i
*u
Mid
*ə
Open
*a
Proto-Philippines schwa *ə often merged with other vowels, but is retained in a diverse range of Philippine languages, and in southern dialects of Ilokano.
Paz' reconstruction
Another notable proposal is by Paz who conducted a bottom-up approach by reconstructing using her own symbols. Paz revisits two types of proto-Austronesian L as part of her reconstruction, which makes it distinct from other reconstructions. In comparison to Llamzon, Paz presents five diphthongs instead.
Lexicon
Below is a table comparing core vocabulary from modern Philippine languages in relation to the follow Proto-Philippine innovations. Note that the accented vowels under Proto-Philippine indicate the stress, while q represents glottal stop.
Proto-Philippine
Tagalog
Ilokano
Kapampangan
Visayan group
Gloss
aso
aso
asu
dog
bahay
balay
bale
balay
house
baboy
baboy
babi
baboy
pig
bago
baro
bayu
bag-o
new
babae
babai
babai
babayi bayi
woman/female
dikit
dekket
dukut
adhesive/ stick
dara
daya
blood
dugo
dugo
blood
halik
agek
halok
kiss
pangalan ngalan
nagan
ngalan
pangalan ngalan ngaran
name
danum
danum
water
tubig
tubi tubig
water
langoy
langoy
langoy
swim
tao
tao
tau
tawo
human
Below are selected animal and plant names in Proto-Philippine from the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary.
