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| Northern Luzon | |
|---|---|
| Cordilleran | |
| Geographic distribution | Cordillera Central (Luzon) |
Native speakers | 12,928,780 (2020)[1] |
| Linguistic classification | Austronesian
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | nort3238 |
 Geographic extent of Northern Luzon languages based onEthnologue | |
TheNorthern Luzon languages (also known as theCordilleran languages) are one of the few established large groups withinPhilippine languages. These are mostly located in and around theCordillera Central of northernLuzon in thePhilippines. Among its major languages areIlocano,Pangasinan andIbanag.
Lawrence Reid (2018) divides the over thirty Northern Luzon languages into five branches: theNortheastern Luzon,Cagayan Valley andMeso-Cordilleran subgroups, furtherIlokano andArta as group-level isolate branches.[2][note 1]
| Proto-Northern Luzon | |
|---|---|
| Reconstruction of | Northern Luzon languages |
Reconstructed ancestors | |
| Lower-order reconstructions | |
Reid (2006) has reconstructed the Proto-Northern Luzon sound system as follows, with phonemicstress:[5]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | *i | *ɨ | *u |
| Open | *a |
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | *p | *t | *k | *ʔ | |
| voiced | *b | *d | *j | *g | ||
| Fricative | *s | |||||
| Nasal | *m | *n | *ŋ | |||
| Lateral | *l | |||||
| Approximant | *w | *y | ||||
The sound inventory of Proto-Northern Luzon shows no innovations fromProto-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' (cf. Proto-Philippine*hatəd 'escort') and*laman 'wild pig' (cf. Proto-Philippine*laman 'flesh').[3]