Bannag: A Journal of Local Knowledge, Volume 3, Number 1, Year 2016 25 ISSN: 2423-1347 LEXICOGRAPHY OF KALINGA DIALECTS Harwin Curtney L. Baggay, Thalia P. Melad and Liza M. Empedrad, Ph.D School of Education, Arts, and Sciences ABSTRACT The study was a comparative study of dialects used by Upper Kalinga and Lower Kalinga with a view on finding out the differences and similarities used by them. The study was based on the selected 81 words which were translated in their dialects. The respondents of the study were the Kalinga tribes who reside in the Upper Kalinga which are Tulgaw and Dananaw Tribes and Lower Kalinga which are Limos and Cal- Owan tribes. These tribes belong to the same geographical location. More particularly, this paper describes in details the lexical, phonological and morphological differences of the tribes. The data gathering was conducted using two methods: written communication and oral communication. The findings show that Kalinga has differences and similarities in their lexemes. The Kalinga tribes have their own distinct lexemes. They differ in the pronunciation of various letters. It was found out that the differences of the four tribes have variation pattern. It was revealed in the study that the Kalinga province has its own lexemes and it varies in different location. This only shows that the tribes that are near to each other have a greater percentage of similarity and the tribes that are far from each other show high percentage of differences. This implies that the province has its own unique language disposition. Moreover, the implementation of the MTB-MLE can use the native tongue of the people aside from using the Ilocano dialect by knowing each student’s tribe to know what dialect to use as a medium of instruction. Keywords: Lexicography, Morphology, Phonology, Kalinga Dialects, Natural Language Processing INTRODUCTION No human language is fixed, uniform, or unvarying; all languages show internal variation. The actual usage varies from group to group and from speaker to speaker in terms of pronunciation, choice of words, meanings or semantics, and syntactic constructions (Ayeomoni, 2012). So, this study looks into both variations and similarities in the lexicography of the Kalinga dialects with respect to dialects spoken in lower and upper Kalinga. Language variation is an observed phenomenon found in every language in this world (Abu Shareah, Abdulhakim, AL-Takhayim, 2015). Every language has its varieties or dialects; when a certain variety of a language is used according to the users, then it is called dialect. Dialects are normally determined by speaker’s geographical background. Differences in vocabulary are one aspect of dialect diversity which people notice readily and comment on quite frequently. One factor that affects dialect diversity is the influence of geographical barriers. A river, a mountain range, or an expanse of barren land, can serve to keep two populations apart, creating or maintaining differences in usage between dialects on either side (Rickford, 2002). The Kalinga is one of the major ethnolinguistic groups inhabiting Northern Luzon. Though Kalinga is an ethnic group that lived in the same province, the Kalingas are divided into tribes. They are classified according to “bodong” holding groups or “ili;” namely the Tinglayans, Lubuagans, Tanudans, Pasils, Balbalans, Pinukupuks, and Tabuks. The people of Tinglayan, Lubuagan, and Tanudan live in upper Kalinga while the people of Pasil, Pinukpuk, Balbalan, Rizal and Tabuk live in lower Kalinga. These tribes have also sub-tribes, each having its own dialect, tradition, and customs. These differences in culture and dialects often cause trial misunderstanding that leads to inter‐tribal armed warfare. It is in their multilingual diversity that the Kalinga tribal community is often referred to as the “Babel of the Philippines”. In spite of the number of dialects spoken by each of the sub‐tribes, the