Waray Language Variations in Calbayog and Catarman: A Morphemic Analysis

Abstract

Waray is a Philippine language predominantly spoken in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. Notably, the language exhibits variation in its use across the provinces within the region, showcasing significant morphological diversity across its dialects. These variations influence not only linguistic structures but also the social identities and communicative practices of its speakers. Despite the richness of the Waray language and its dialects, there is a notable lack of extensive qualitative studies investigating morphemic differences across dialects. This study aimed to examine the morphemic variations of the Waray language between Catarman and Calbayog City in Samar Island, focusing specifically on content words. The assumption that morphemic variations exist between these two speech communities was supported by Parker and Riley's theory of language variation and Chambers and Trudgill's theory of the geographic dialect continuum. In this study, the linguistic analysis method was employed, using five literary pieces written in the Waray language as sources of verbal data. These literary works were considered as the study's corpora. The findings revealed that morphemic variations between the dialects of Catarman and Calbayog City manifested in contextual variation, clipping, and syllable shifts. Based on these findings, it was concluded that morphemic variations do exist between the two speech communities in Samar Island, with a total of thirty-two content words identified: twelve nouns, eight verbs, seven adjectives, and five adverbs.