1. General. In the Philippines today more than 80 indigenous languages are spoken. Of these, eight are usually labelled major, being ranked by number of mother-tongue speakers. They are Cebuano, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Ilokano, Bikolano, Waray, Kapampangan and Pangasinan. The other languages are generally known as minor languages.

Fairly extensive grammatical and lexical studies have been published in several of the major languages. However very lit? tle lexical material from the minor languages is available. There are few published lexicons of minor Philippine languages that compare with Conklin's Hanunoo vocabulary (1953), Elkins' Manobo dictionary (1968), Newell's Batad Ifugao vocabulary (1968), McKaughan'and Macaraya's Maranao dictionary (1967)-or Vanoverbergh's Kankanay dictionary (1933). Other published vocabularies of minor languages include Batak (Warren, 1959), Sagada Igorot or Northern Kankanay (Scott, 1957) and Aklanon (Zorc 1969). Because of the paucity of good lexical data, definitive comparative and historical studies to clarify the subgrouping of Philippine languages have yet to be begun. A start in this general direction has been made utilizing the techniques of lexicostatistics and glottochronology. The basis for these studies has been the Swadesh 200 list of so called basic vocabulary. Many of these lists were collected under the direction of the Tri-Institutional Pacific Program during the 1950's, and in a considerable number of instances the lists were prepared by investigators who were completely unfamiliar with the languages. They frequently had had no previous exposure to their phonological structures, and often had no way of judging the adequacy of their informant's re? sponses. The results were predictable--wrong glosses, inade? quate equivalents, unreliable and inconsistent phonological representation. Such lists are of no value as data for apply? ing standard comparative techniques. As a result of the language studies performed by members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a very consi? derable body of lexical, phonological and grammatical data has been accumulated for more than half of the minor languages of