Manobo, Sarangani Detailed Description

INTRODUCTION

Sarangani Manobo is one of the languages com-
prising the Manobo subgroup within the Philippine
branch of the Austronesian language family.! It is
spoken by an estimated twenty thousand people living
on the east coast of the Sarangani Peninsula and
another ten thousand people living on the San Agustin
Peninsula of southern Mindanao.

This Introductory Guide is a practical grammar
of Sarangani Manobo. It is intended primarily to
help those persons who are learning to speak Manobo
as a second language by introducing them to the dis-
tinctive characteristics of the language in a prog-
ressive manner.

In contrast to traditional taxonomic (classifi-
cational) grammars, this monograph frequently shifts
from one level or pattern to another and then back
again, as necessary, to attain an easier progression
from simpler to more complex material. As a refer-
ence aid, an outline of grammatical constructions at
each level has been provided in Appendix C, with ref-
erence to sections of the text where particular
units are described.

This Guide is the outgrowth of a structural
linguistic analysis of the formal contrasts of the
langua^, but the results of the analysis have been
deliberately restated using terminology more readily
understood by the nonspecialist reader. In that the
Guide describes the basic grammar of the language, it
will also be of interest to specialists pursuing
linguistic studies of Philippine languages. 2

Dubois, Carl. 1976. Sarangani Manobo: An Introductory
Guide. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.