Linguistics and Literature Studies 6(6): 312-316, 2018 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/lls.2018.060607 Variations in the Lexicon of the Three Generations of Inabaknon Speakers Rogelio A. Banagbanag College of Arts and Communication, University of Eastern Philippines, Philippines Copyright©2018 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract This study investigated the lexical variations in Inabaknon as used by three generations of speakers, the old, middle-aged and young. The ethnolinguistic type of investigation was employed using Speech Elicitation Guide and a Word Checklist to collect the language data needed in the study. The most number of words collected were common to all the three generations of informants. The old generation had more unique words or words that they alone used than the other two generations. Some of the words were of Spanish and Samarnon origin and Catholicism had a great influence on the language. The middle generation shared most of their vocabularies with the old and the young generations. The language of the young generation is influenced by their exposure to the different technological media. They had also the most number of absent Inabaknon lexicon. Some of these are words they can understand but are no longer active in their vocabulary. Some words are already unintelligible to the youth. Keywords Lexical Variations, Lexical Change, Inabakon, Generations, Ethnolinguistic 1. Introduction Inabaknon, a language spoken in an island named Capul, Northern Samar in the Philippines, is one of the eight distinct Sama-Badjao Southern Proto Philippine languages,[2] a sub-group belonging to the Austrenesian family of languages. It is a very distinct language making it so different from the other Visayan languages of the nearby towns. The Sama languages belong to a group of languages which has members in Sabah, Malaysia. Within the Philippines, Inabaknon is the most different of the Sama languages, forming a separate subgroup against the other seven languages [3]. It is the only Sama language which was not subjected to the Arabic influence via Islam[4]. A proof of this is the solid faith of the Abaknons in Catholicism up to the present day. The coming of Spanish Catholicism in 1596 made the island of Capul one of the centers of evangelization for Christianity. This brought about a heavy Spanish influence upon the Inabaknon particularly on the old native speakers of the language [5]. Through migration during the mid-1960s, Capuleños became interested in higher education in order to seek better economic opportunities. This brought about cross-cultural exchange which to some extent affected the homogeneity of the Inabaknon language and culture. In spite of the above development, the older folk still preserve their native language through constant use and close association with their kind. For over the years, Inabaknon has undergone language change specifically in its lexicon. There are words that the older people use which to the younger generation are already unintelligible. In much the same way, the young have words which are not understood by the old. The words being used by the young generation which are unintelligible to the old generation are those brought in by the new technologies. Natural phenomena which believed to be happening in the present time because of climate change were also part of the vocabulary of the young and the middle generations. This study was meant to keep a record of the changes that happened in the Inabaknon language through time particularly in the vocabulary of the three generations of its speakers. 2. Objectives This study aimed at presenting the variations in the lexicon of three generations of Inabaknon speakers – the young, the middle-aged and the old. Specifically, the objectives were as follows: 1) list down the words that are commonly used by the older, middle and younger generations; 2) find out the words used by the older generation which are not commonly used by the middle and the younger generations; 3) identify the words used by the middle generation which are not commonly used by the