Documentation and Grammar of Bahasa Sug

Sajed S. Ingilan

University of Southeastern Philippines, Philippines

Abstract: Before there was the Philippines, the Sulu Sultanate existed as a unified state governed under the principles of Islam, hence the title Sulu Darussalam. Bahasa Sug, the language of the Sultanate of Sulu, is still used by the people of the Sulu archipelago, Zamboanga, Palawan, Davao, and in the Malaysian state of Sabah. This paper has a dual purpose: 1) To present a survey of the documentation done on Bahasa Sug, and 2) to study the grammar of Bahasa Sug for pedagogical purposes. Native language speakers of Bahasa Sug and experts in linguistics were consulted in this qualitative research. Findings revealed that only a few studies are done on Bahasa Sug, and are focused on lexicography, linguistics, and literature. As studied, Bahasa Sug is a predicate-initial language. The Bahasa Sug sentence is basically composed of a verb phrase and a determiner phrase. Like the nations of royalty in Southeast Asia, it is of great importance that the Philippines preserve its indigenous languages, in this case, Bahasa Sug.

Keywords: Bahasa Sug, morphosyntax, argument structure, Tausug, linguistics