Piers KELLY. 2015.

A Comparative Analysis of Eskayan and Boholano-Visayan (Cebuano) Phonotactics:

implications for the origins of Eskayan lexemes.
Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (JSEALS) 8:iii-xiv
Received 1/4/2015, revised text accepted 6/8/2015 (as data paper), published September 2015.
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/14914
ISSN: 1836-6821 | Website: http://jseals.org
Editor-In-Chief Dr Mark Alves | Managing Editors Dr Peter Jenks, Dr Paul Sidwell Asia-Pacific
Copyright vested in the author; released under Creative Commons Attribution Licence Linguistics

www.jseals.org | Volume 8 | 2015 | Asia-Pacific Linguistics

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ESKAYAN AND

BOHOLANO-VISAYAN (CEBUANO) PHONOTACTICS:
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ORIGINS OF ESKAYAN
LEXEMES

Piers Kelly
The Australian National University
<Piers.Kelly@anu.edu.au>

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.
Keywords: phonotactics, syllables, artificial languages
ISO 639-3 codes: esy, ceb
Coordinates (esy): 9°48'20.52"N, 124°24'13.92"E

1 Introduction
The Eskaya ( ) people have only been known to the wider public since 1980 when agricultural
advisors encountered an apparently isolated community in southeast Bohol in the southern Philippines
(Ramos 1980, Abregana 1984). Early visitors were intrigued by the group’s highly unusual language
and writing system, speculating variously that the Eskaya were displaced migrants from beyond the
region, a ‘fossilised’ pre-Hispanic community, a cult, or a hoax (for an overview of early claims see
Kelly 2014b). These hypotheses were to remain untested since no systematic analysis of the Eskayan
language or its script was undertaken at this time. Traditional local histories reproduced by Eskaya
people in oral and written form were also sidelined by those who visited the group. In these accounts
Eskaya people maintain that their language and script were both consciously created by an ancestral
individual referred to as Pinay. Described as the first ‘Pope’ in the Philippines, Pinay is characterised
as a pre-contact responsible for establishing an indigenous civilisation in Bohol. Today, those who are
capable of speaking and writing Pinay’s language number approximately 550 in five villages of
southeast Bohol (Fig. 1.) and the domains of use are restricted to traditional schooling, praying,
 Piers KELLY | A Comparative Analysis of Eskayan and Boholano-Visayan | JSEALS 8 (2015)

singing, speech-making and the reading and writing of Eskaya literature. Never has the Eskayan
language been used as a medium of day-to-day communication.

Figure 1: Villages with Eskaya populations in southeast Bohol.

Until recently, descriptive and analytical work on the Eskayan language has been limited to two
scholars: Fr Milan Ted Torralba wrote several detail research proposals in the 1990s (Torralba 1991a,
1991b, 1993), and Stella Consul produced a sketch grammar of Eskayan in 2005 (Consul 2005).
Noticing the structural symmetry between Eskayan and the Visayan language spoken in Bohol and its
neighbouring islands, Consul concluded that ‘the linearity of Iniskaya [Eskayan] is basically Malay
sharing the same immediate constituents with the languages of the Central Philippines’ (2005, 99).
My own analysis has shown that Eskayan shares the same essential morphosyntax as Visayan — with
some intriguing exceptions in certain bound forms and patterns of suppletion — but differs markedly
in its lexicon (Kelly 2012a). In effect, it would appear that Pinay created Eskayan by relexifying
Boholano-Visayan.
Visayan (Bisaya’), a language that is spoken by around 16 million people in the southern
Philippines (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2015)1, is the dominant language of Bohol’s 1.2 million
inhabitants and the mother tongue of all Eskaya people today. As such, it is the most relevant
comparator in any analysis of Eskayan. Visayan belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the
Austronesian family (Zorc 1977), and is the second most commonly spoken language in the
Philippines after Tagalog. It is conventional for linguists to refer to Visayan as ‘Cebuano’, however
this term is confusing since it can also specify the prestige dialect of Visayan spoken on the island of
Cebu. Due to minor phonological differences between Visayan dialects, I will here distinguish the
Bohol dialect as Boholano-Visayan.2
The late Hector Santos, an influential Philippine script enthusiast from California, was the first
to point out that the Eskaya script included characters for representing syllable structures such as
CCVCC that were atypical for Boholano-Visayan and Philippine languages generally (Santos 1996).
Indeed, characters representing consonant clusters are found throughout the Eskaya writing system,

1
The estimate provided in Ethnologue is probably conservative since it is drawn from census data and
probably doesn’t take into account second-language speakers of Visayan, particularly in coastal Mindanao.
2
My analysis of Boholano-Visayan relies on original descriptive work in Kelly (2012a) and grammatical
descriptions of Cebuano-Visayan by Wolff (1972). The sole work on Boholano-Visayan phonology is
Tinampay (1977).

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faithfully reflecting the same structures in Eskayan lexemes. Such apparent idiosyncrasy in Eskayan
syllable structure suggests a fruitful point of comparison between Eskayan and its grammatical
progenitor Boholano-Visayan. This data paper contributes to the debate on the status, history and
typology of the Eskayan language by bringing to light important phonotactic differences between
Eskayan and Boholano-Visayan. In turn the data has the potential to inform the analysis of the
Eskayan lexicon (and its history), and the relatively unsystematic Eskaya writing system (see Fig. 2
below, and Kelly 2014a).

Figure 2. Painted board depicting Eskayan ancestors with their names and roles from Taytay village.
Pinay is in the top left corner.
It should be noted that a small proportion of the roughly 3000 attested Eskayan lexemes show
clear borrowing or ‘inspiration’ from Spanish and English even in core vocabulary.3 However, the
influence of these two colonial languages extends far beyond these terms and into the syllable
structure of Eskayan words in all semantic domains. As the data presented below will show,
consonant clusters typical of English and Spanish loaned vocabulary in Philippine languages are
prominent in non-borrowed Eskayan terms, including core vocabulary. The pervasiveness of these
‘colonial’ structures throughout the Eskayan lexicon suggests that English and Spanish were available
to the putative creator Pinay in his formulation of new Eskayan terms.
For clarity, Eskayan words below are in bold, Boholano-Visayan and Spanish words are
italicised, and English words are enclosed in single quotation marks. The orthographies of both
Boholano-Visayan and Eskayan follow the conventions for Cebuano-Visayan established by John
Wolff (1972).

3
For access to Eskayan dictionary files and corpora, see The Eskaya Digital Archive
(http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/PK2/)

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2 Phoneme inventories
Since borrowed vocabulary is particularly relevant to the analysis of Eskayan syllables, phones that
occur only in borrowed terms are included in the inventories below, but marked with a dagger (†).
Table 1: Boholano-Visayan
p t †tʃ k ʔ i u [ə]
b d †ʤ [dy] g
s h a
m n ŋ
l [w], r [ɹ]
w j [ʤ] (‘y’)

Table 2: Eskayan
p t tʃ k ʔ i u
b d ʤ [dy] g
s h a
m n ŋ
l, r [ɹ]
w j (‘y’)

In both systems, the allophonic [ɹ] is optionally realised directly after a vowel. It is observed
more frequently in the speech of those under the age of 50 and suggests an increased influence of
Philippine English phonology in recent generations. In Visayan, the coda -/r/ is exceedingly rare as it
is found only in words borrowed from Spanish and English, such as diskumpiyar (‘be suspicious’;
from Sp. desconfiar) and sirkul (‘circle’). In Eskayan, on the other hand, -/r/ is highly prominent,
appearing in almost 15 per cent of all lexical items.4
One of the more striking discrepancies between the two phoneme inventories above is the fact
that /tʃ/ and /ʤ/ are loaned phonemes in Visayan but are ‘native’ in Eskayan; that is to say they appear
in Eskayan words that show no traces of having been adapted or borrowed from other languages.
Further, the allophone [ʤ], characteristic of the East Boholano-Visayan dialect spoken in the Eskaya
villages (Fig. 1), is contrastive in Eskayan while [ə] is absent entirely. Notably, the phone [ʤ] is a
socially marked feature of Boholano-Visayan, which, despite being native to the eastern half of the
island is regarded as emblematic of Boholano speech generally. Elsewhere in the Visayas the rare
phoneme /ʤ/—alternatively realised as [dy]—is restricted to English loans such as ‘George’ and
‘joker’.
Differences between the two sound systems are more marked when it comes to the ways in
which these sets of phonemes combine to form discrete syllables. Contrary to the norm for Philippine
languages, native Eskayan roots may range in length from one syllable, as in lu' (‘valley’), to as many
as five, as in wasnangpanudlu (‘think’). In Visayan, native root words are of two syllables and
always adhere to the sequence CVCCVC (e.g., panday /panday/ ‘forge’) or CVCVC (e.g., iru /ʔiruʔ/
‘dog’). However, words that are borrowed into Visayan from other languages display a greater
diversity of structures. Borrowings such as prak [prak] (‘frock’), and klirk [kliɹk] (‘clerk’) exhibit
CCVC and CCVCC shapes, which can also feature in components of loaned roots with more than one
syllable such as prisintar (‘present oneself’, from Sp. presentar ‘to present’) and wik-ind (‘weekend’).
The structure of Eskayan syllables is such that Visayan-like shapes of CVCCVC, as in the word
pulhal (‘sigh’), and CVCVC as in the word sikaw (‘keep watch over’), are permissible. What is

4
I have identified a total of 105 instances of -/ar/, 242 of -/ir/, and 79 of -/ur/ in an Eskayan lexicon of 2948
items.

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telling, however, is that consonant clusters typical of Spanish and English are found frequently in non-
borrowed Eskayan words and they even turn up in core vocabulary. Consider, for example, krat
(‘thirty’) and prindidu (‘tooth’), both of which would be phonotactically impossible in Visayan even
though the Eskayan words have evidently not been loaned from other languages.
Of further interest is the fact that in neither language is any word permitted to begin with /s/-
followed by a consonant. English words with this sequence that are borrowed into Visayan undergo
vowel epenthesis. Thus words such as ‘sponsor’ are nativised as ispunsur /ʔispunsuɹ/. Spanish,
likewise, does not permit /s/- to be followed by a consonant in word-initial position, and Spanish
speakers adopt a similar strategy when nativising these kinds of words. It appears that a version of this
kind of cluster-resolving strategy is at work Eskayan, but, again, the ‘epenthesis’ occurs in ostensibly
in vocabulary that is not loaned from Spanish, such as istaku (‘right side’), isturisti (‘shy’), iskurada
(‘bravery’), istrapiradu (‘flower’) and even Eskaya.
As we will see, Eskayan codas are not quite so variable and tend to match what is permissible
in Boholano-Visayan. One possible reason for this is that Visayan syllable codas already have a high
degree of consistency with their Spanish counterparts—all the marked differences occur at the
beginning of words and syllables.

3 Comparative syllable structure

In Boholano-Visayan, native monosyllabic lexical roots have the shape CVC, while disyllabic roots
take the form CVCVC or CVCCVC. Lexemes that orthographically begin or end in a vowel are
realised with a glottal onset or coda; the glottal is only represented if it belongs to a stressed syllable
that is not word-initial. The shapes CGVC and CGVCVC, where ‘G’ is a glide, are attested in rare
native words such as twagsik (‘for liquid to fly and scatter’) and tyabaw (‘cry out in pain’) though
these may be realised with epenthesis as [tu'wagsik] and [ti'yabaw]. Semivowels are also present in
Boholano-Visayan codas as components of diphthongs with the shape CVG.
However, the vast majority consonant-semivowel onsets in Boholano-Visayan are found in
Spanish loanwords, as shown in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Consonant-semivowel onsets in Boholano-Visayan and Spanish

Boholano-Visayan Spanish (Castillian) Gloss
dwindi /dwindi/ duende /dwende/ ‘house spirit’
gwapa /gwapa guapa /gwapa/ ‘pretty’
nyibi /nyibi/ nieve /nyeβe/ ‘snow’
syudad /syudad/ ciudad /syudad/ ‘city’

Again this kind of cluster is often resolved through vowel epenthesis. Spanish loans beginning
with the sequence /nwi/ or /kwi/ are nativised as /nuy/ and /kuy/. Thus cueba /kweba/ is rendered as
kuyba /kuyba/ (‘cave’) and nueve /nwebe/ as nuybi /nuybi/ (‘nine’). This suggests that while CG-
onsets are attested in native and nativised lexemes they are nonetheless dispreferred.
In short, native Boholano-Visayan syllable structure can be summarised in the following rubric
where parentheses enclose optional elements: CV(G)/(C). It should be further noted that not all
possible realisations of CVC are available in Boholano-Visayan. For example, no native Boholano-
Visayan word begins with r-, wu- or yi-, even though European borrowings allow these onsets in
words such as rayna (‘queen’; from Sp. reina), wul (‘woollen cloth’; from Eng. ‘wool’) and yilu
(‘ice’; from Sp. hielo).
By stark comparison, Eskayan includes all of these native Boholano-Visayan syllable structures
but also permits ‘loaned’ structures, even in those Eskayan words that do not appear to have been
modelled on Spanish or English. To put it more succinctly, clusters of the type CCVC and CVCC are

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found to occur in basic Eskayan roots. For example: blasim (‘eyelid’) and rusult (‘husked corn’).
Eskayan syllable structure can thus be summarised as: C (C)/(G) V (G) C (C).

3.1 Boholano-Visayan and Eskayan onsets

Table 4 below provides a comparative inventory of onsets. An asterisk indicates that the onset is
unattested and thus provisionally dispreferred, though not necessarily impermissible. Clusters that are
unattested in either language are not listed. A dagger (†) indicates that the feature is the result of a
loan (or foreign ‘modelling’ in the case of Eskayan). Note, in these instances, that loanwords are only
employed as examples wherever non-loans cannot be found to illustrate the feature in question. Only
word-initial sequences are listed here as these provide unambiguous evidence for syllabification. In a
few cases, supplementary evidence is gleaned from medial onsets that are reasonably clear on the
basis of known structures. However, word-internal clusters are not systematically compared here.

Table 4: Boholano-Visayan and Eskayan onsets with example terms

Boholano-Visayan Eskayan
p- pihig (‘slanting’) p- pida (‘greater’)
payag (‘hut’) panagang (‘thumb’, ‘big toe’)
pulus (‘be of use’) pul (‘stub or stump of s.t.’)
t- tigib (‘chisel’) t- tibuhal (‘concealment’)
taas (‘long, tall, high’) tagni (‘rotten’)
tu'ali (‘be upside down’) tudli (‘line’)
†c- †tsinilas (‘slippers’) tʃ- tsiyamuli (‘grass’, ‘weed’)
†tsarlistun (‘Charleston’) pa.tsam (‘take s.t. s.w.’)
†tsukulati (‘chocolate’) ri.tsu.wing (‘to worsen’)
k- kilat (‘lightning’) k- kidusir (‘folk doctor’)
kabanayan (‘group of people kaydi (‘back of the mouth’)
related by blood’) kudalu (‘delirium’; ‘be delirious’)
kudlit (‘make a scratch on s.t.’)
ʔ- ibid (‘k.o. lizard’) ʔ- ikir (‘last’)
abang (‘rent’) abisihaba (‘west’)
ugbuk (‘plant or stick s.t. upright’) uti (‘pay attention to’)
b- bili (‘price’) b- bichdin (‘get acquainted’)
ba'ba' (‘mouth’) badi (‘gall’)
budlay (‘tiring’, ‘tiresome’) bukdriski (‘mung bean’)
d- dilaab (‘for a fire to become d- dibir (‘choosy’)
blazing’) dadama (‘assemble’, ‘gather’)
daan (‘old’) dul (‘post of house or fence’)
du'aw (‘visit)
ʤ- yamu (‘none’) ʤ- chdidlin (‘enthusiasm’)
bad.yu' (‘for sweet potatoes to chdaru (‘buried’)
taste rotten’) chduri (‘cut throat of animal’)
pang.ad.yi (‘prayer’)
g- ginikanan (‘parents’) g- gim (‘put s.t. down!’)
gabuk (‘rotten’) gawus (‘divide into portions’)
guba' (‘destroy’) gud (‘mound’, ‘hill’)
s- sidlakan (‘east’) s- siri (‘slippery’)
sa (‘at’, ‘to’) sabira (‘open s.t.’)
suba' (‘river’) sudayis (‘place’)

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h- hikug (‘strangle’) h- himawa (‘immigrant’)

hagdan (‘stairs’, ‘ladder’) haldu (‘loud’)
hukum (‘pass judgment’) huk (‘itchy’)
m- minatay (‘human corpse’) m- mita (‘understand’)
mabaw (‘shallow’) malakun (‘envy’)
mugna' (‘create’) muldi (‘inferior’)
n- nigu (‘rattan winnowing tray’) n- nibnid (‘blame’)
nanay (‘mother’) napuykiri (‘while’)
nuka (‘sore’, ‘infection’) nukir (‘soup’)
ŋ- ngisi (‘grin’) ŋ- ngiyus (‘darkness’)
ngabil (‘lips’) ngadyu (‘fruit’)
ngutngut (‘painful’) ngu (‘take refuge’)
l- libut (‘surround’) l- libar (‘pronounce’)
laay (‘monotonous’) lagsu (‘uncooked’)
luag (‘loose’) luhip (‘pull’)
†ri- †rilu (‘watch or clock’) r- ribul (‘catch on fire’)
†ra- †rayna (‘queen’) radiyu (‘happen’)
†ru- †rulkul (‘call the roll’) rubus (‘sprinkle water on s.t.’)
wi- wilik ‘remove s.t. from oneself’ w- winchdit (‘stench’),
wa- wagtang (‘lose s.t.’) wadru (‘measure with a
†wu- †wul (‘woollen cloth’) measuring vessel’)
wus (‘cheek’)
†yi- †yilu (‘ice’; ‘yellow’) y- yi'ulsamris (‘shy’)
ya- yam-id (‘sneer’) yaduwal (‘slaughtered’)
yu- yukbu' (‘bow down’) yudusim (‘pay a visit’)
†pl- †pligrawun (‘playground’) pli- pay.pay.pling (‘butterfly’)
†plata (‘silver’) pla- plantis (‘roof’)
†pluma (‘fountain pen’) plu- plukitus (‘unbaptised’)
†pr- †pridiktar (‘foretell’) pr- prindidu (‘tooth’)
†prak (‘frock) pratda (‘good’, ‘well behaved’)
†prubinsiya (‘province’) pruk (‘barrio’)
†tr- †triplit (‘triplets’) †tri- †tri (‘two’)
†trabahu (‘work’) tra- tralpuy (‘shoved’)
†trumpa (‘trumpet’) †tru- †trupa (‘troops’)
†kl- †klirk (‘clerk’) kl- †klir (‘clear’)
†klasi (‘class’) klabu (‘sound’)
†klus (‘being close, intimate’) klupir (‘night’)
†kr- †kristal (‘crystal’, ‘glass’) kr- krim (‘dishwater’)
†kras (‘crash’) kratu (‘chin’)
†krus (‘cross’) krup (‘evening’)
†bl- †blid (‘razor blade’) bl- blasim (‘eyelid’)
†blakburd (‘blackboard’) bluy (‘well’, ‘alright’)
†blusa (‘blouse’)
†br- †brid (‘breed’) br- brislumin (‘gold’)
†brawun (‘brown’) bradi (‘contrary to one’s liking’)
†brudkas (‘broadcast’) win.brus (‘proceed!’)
†dr- †dribul (‘dribble a ball’) dr- drisu (‘contest’)
†drayb (‘drive’) drar (meaning unknown)
†druwir (‘drawer’) drusir (‘freedom’)

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*gli- †glab (‘gloves’) *gl-

†gla- †glu (‘glue’)
†glu-
†gr- †gridir (‘road grader’) gr- grisalwi (‘fortunate’)
†grasya (‘grace’, ‘blessing’) grabanti (‘siblings’)
†grupu (‘group’) grumir (‘earthquake’)

Excluding all loanwords from Boholano-Visayan, and all identifiable foreign selections from
Eskayan, it is evident that Eskayan naturalistically permits a far greater range of consonant clusters in
its syllable onsets. In fact, /tri/- and /tru/- are the only Eskayan onsets in the comparison table above
that are limited to ‘loans’. Boholano-Visayan, on the other hand, prefers a basic CV- onset in all
native roots.

3.1.1 Consonant-semivowel onsets and epenthesis

Native Boholano-Visayan CG- onsets are rare, though examples can be found for /py/-, /ty/- and /ky/-.
Loaned words expand this to include /pw/-, /bw/-, /dw/-, /kw/-, /sw/-, /sy/-, /ny/- and /ly/-. An optional
epenthetic [i] may be inserted prior to /y/ and a [u] prior to /w/ in every case. The examples pligrawun
(‘playground’), brawun (‘brown’) and druwir (‘drawer’) likewise illustrate that similar epenthesis
occurs after the glide, to resolve the illicit sequence -GC.
One of the challenges of Eskayan literality—the notion that writing is the ‘true’ embodiment of
language (Kelly 2012b)—is that certain forms of epenthesis, that may not be represented in phonemic
orthographies of Boholano-Visayan, may well have arrived ready-packaged in Eskayan writing
systems. Thus, without sufficient minimal pairs and naturalistic spoken evidence there is no way of
knowing whether /dwal/ is the ‘underlying’ form of the Eskayan word conventionally written as
‹du›‹wal› (‘dead’). This state-of-affairs is an innate characteristic of the language as it is found and
makes a genuine comparison of equivalent CG- onsets a tricky proposition. In fact, the only
unambiguous CG- onset available in Eskayan is /ly/-.
A search of the Eskayan lexicon for CVG- onsets brings up a number of terms that may be
comparable to epenthesised CG- onsets in native Boholano-Visayan vocabulary: piyami (‘do s.t.
inadvertently’), piyapit (‘k.o. spiny shrub’), tiyalka (‘finish!’), kiyabi (‘failed’), kiyur (‘seize prey’,
‘abduct’), pirkiya (‘female saint’). Likewise the kinds of Boholano-Visayan CG- onsets found in
Spanish borrowings alone have analogues in non-Hispanic Eskayan words: puwim (‘red’), buwasir
(‘chief’), duwis (‘stare into space’), kuwirdidami (‘amusement’, ‘activity’), suwip (‘consumed’),
siyaw (‘made half conscious’) and niyaba (‘tail’). It is arguable therefore, that Eskayan has CG-
onsets of both the native Boholano-Visayan type (ie, /py/-, /ty/- and /ky/-) and the ‘loaned’ Hispanic
type. Importantly, all types are found to occur in lexical items whose origins cannot be traced to
colonial contact languages.
Table 4 above indicates that the word-initial cluster /sC/- is not permitted in either language.
Loans of this shape will give rise to another kind of epenthesis unrelated to semivowels. English
words loaned into Boholano-Visayan that begin with /sC/- will take an obligatory [ʔi]- epenthesis in
word-initial position. Thus ‘sponsor’ is nativised in Boholano-Visayan as ispunsur /ʔispunsuɹ/ and
‘sleeveless (dress)’ as isliblis /ʔisliblis/. Since a similar epenthetic process is found in Spanish—
including Spanish loans into Boholano-Visayan like ispada (‘sword’, Sp espada)—it is likely that
Boholano-Visayan speakers have simply ‘pseudo-Hispanicised’ these English loans as a strategy for
resolving the illicit onset.
Similarly, Eskayan does not permit /sC/- onsets however there are numerous word-initial
sequences in the lexicon that look suspiciously like Hispanic or pseudo-Hispanic epenthesis, such as
those mentioned earlier: istaku (‘right side’), isturisti (‘shy’), iskurada (‘bravery’), istrapiradu

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(‘flower’) and Eskaya (‘Eskaya’). Contrary to expectations, none of these items can be traced to
English or Spanish.

3.2 Boholano-Visayan and Eskayan codas

The relative asymmetry of Boholano-Visayan and Eskayan onsets does not extend to their respective
codas, as witnessed in Table 5 below.

Table 5 Boholano-Visayan and Eskayan codas with example terms

Boholano-Visayan Eskayan
-p talip (‘slice root crops into strips’) -p tip (‘imitate’)
alap-alap (‘be in doubt’) asap (‘before’, ‘earlier’)
tidlup (‘dive sharply’) up (‘take!’)
-t hungit (‘put s.t. into the mouth’) -t chdisit (‘thirsty’)
tapat (‘be loyal to s.o.’) kirat (‘move’)
hugut (‘pull in a rope’) punggut (‘large earthen jar’)
†-c †pits (‘peach’) *-c
†lastats (‘last touch in basketball’)
†kuts (‘coach of a team’)
-k atik (‘boastful’) -k ritik (‘salt’)
ambak (‘jump down’) larak (‘field of rice’)
ibyuk (‘sugar palm’) lyusguk (‘able to win’)
-ʔ mini’ -ʔ tipi' (‘put s.t. into the mouth’)
kana’ lu' (‘valley’)
lutu' (‘cook’) himawa' (‘immigrant’)

-b luib (‘be unfaithful’) -b saklirilib (‘coconut buds’)

kayab (‘to flap’) rupab (‘cut’, ‘hack’)
gahub (‘noisy’, ‘tumultuous’) lyub (k.o. pumpkin)
-d ganid (‘invite s.o. to go s.w.’) -d baldid (‘fend off’)
tupad (‘next to’) tuwad (‘go behind s.t.’)
tungud (‘due to’) sudsud (‘slippers’)
-g sangig (‘k.o. aromatic herb’) -g pilig (‘crush to powder’)
sayag (‘cheerful’) salagsag (‘fruit’)
pugpug (‘covered with dust’) hundug (‘above’)
-s nipis (‘thin’) -s gartis (‘nape of the neck’)
tigas (‘tough’, ‘fearless’) kirluwas (‘futile’)
layus (‘wither’) plusus (‘fitting’, ‘proper’)
-m kalalim (‘sweetness’) -m ligardim (‘roll’, ‘roll s.t.’)
tagamtam (‘have a taste’) kiram (‘peep at s.t. while hidden’)
laum (‘rely’) likriyum (‘overcome’,
‘surmount’)
-n hangin (‘air’, ‘wind’) -n brimin (‘stick to s.t. loyally’)
ulan (‘rain’) dusyan (‘real’, ‘genuine’)
alun (‘long rolling wave’) silmun (‘write s.t.’)
-ŋ dating (‘not to be shy to speak a -ŋ mining (‘patience’)
language one doesn’t know well’) dilyamtakang (‘lunch’)
kibhang (‘be lessened’) datung (‘give’)
sulung (‘see’, ‘look at’)

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-l tangil (‘charm worn for protection’) -l purdil (‘drunk’)

mahal (‘expensive’) rikal (‘exact’)
dahul (‘coarse grained’) chdirul (‘fish corral’)
†-ɹ †lidir (‘leader’) -ɹ gintir (‘let it fall!’)
†lugar (‘place’) pustar (‘tiring’, ‘tiresome’)
†tinidur (‘fork’) kur (‘tangerine’)
-iw iliw (‘long for s.t.’) -w baksiw (‘dishonest’)
-aw lutaw (‘float’) sayaw (‘dance’)
*-uw Buuw (‘Bohol’)
*-iy salikway (‘to reject’) *-iy insay (‘shout at s.o.’)
-ay taghuy (‘whistle’) -ay chduy (‘tell s.o. to do s.t.’)
-uy -uy
*-lt *-ilt rusult (‘husked corn’)
*-alt
-ult
*-ɹk *-iɹk guyurk (‘maltreatment’)
*aɹk
-uɹk
*-etc paswurd (‘password’) *-ɹd
†-ɹd
*-etc jurj (‘George’) *-ɹʤ
†-ɹʤ

The near uniformity of coda options for both languages is of some interest. Even [ʤ], so
prevalent in Eskayan onsets, is nowhere to be found in its syllable codas, just as one would not expect
to find it in native Boholano-Visayan endings. The only true oddities are the Eskayan -[ult] and -[uɹk]
of which rusult (‘husked corn’) and guyurk (‘maltreatment’) are the sole examples exhibiting this
cluster even though they don’t appear to have come from English, in the manner of paswurd
(‘password’) and jurj (‘George’) which exemplify -[ɹd] and -[ɹʤ] in Boholano-Visayan. Likewise, the
coda -[ɹ] is only found in foreign loans into Boholano-Visayan, while the Eskayan examples with this
ending are not traceable to outside languages.

4 Conclusion
In this paper I have presented comparative data on syllable structure in the Boholano-Visayan and
Eskayan languages. I have outlined the phonotactics of loaned vocabulary in Boholano-Visayan (the
mother-tongue of Eskaya people and the basis of Eskayan morphosyntax) and found it to be
isomorphic with the cluster-heavy syllables of Eskayan. In summary, when all foreign loanwords are
excluded, Eskayan syllables naturalistically permit the sound sequences available in Boholano-
Visayan native lexemes in addition to those found in Spanish and English loans. These findings are
condensed in Table 6 below.
Table 6: Phonotactic table for native and loaned Boholano-Visayan in comparison to Eskayan
Terms Phonotactics
Boholano-Visayan C (G) V (G)/(C)
Spanish loans into Boholano-Visayan C (C)/(G) V C (C)

English loans into Boholano-Visayan C (C) V (C) (C)

Eskayan C (C)/(G) V (G)/C (C)

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This outcome has a number of historical and sociolinguistic implications that exceed the scope
of a constrained comparative analysis. For example, while those who spontaneously construct ‘new’
words cannot easily escape their native phonologies (Motley 1981) it is possible that Pinay
incorporated foreign-sounding structures into general vocabulary as part of a conscious or
unconscious strategy of emulating linguistic otherness. In other words, colonial languages in the
Philippines served as his primary examples of what an exotic ‘foreign’ language ought to sound like.
Secondly, the lexical and phonotactic influence of Spanish and English within the Eskayan lexicon as
a whole suggests, circumstantially, that the language was produced at a time in Bohol’s history after
English had become established through the US school system in 1901 but before the 1940s at which
time Spanish competency had disappeared almost entierely (Gonzalez 1980). Although not explored
here, the hybrid Eskaya writing system may well be elucidated with reference to the complex and
‘permissive’ phonotactics of Eskayan lexemes. This system has alphabetic, alphasyllabic and strictly
syllabic features with an inconsistent system of consonant diacritics and over thirty characters for
representing phonotactically unattested syllable shapes such as ‹gli› (Kelly 2014a). Lastly, the
phonotactic comparison outlined here invites wider cross-linguistic studies of other constructed
linguistic registers in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Kalam Pandanus Language (Pawley 1992)
and Hidden Talk (Hoenigman 2012) of Papua New Guinea, and the Li Garan register on the island of
Buru in Indonesia, among others (Maryott and Grimes 1994).

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