93 International Peer Reviewed Journal Contrastive Analysis on Ilokano and English Personal Pronouns ROMMEL V. TABULA http://orcid.org 0000-0003-2691-6749 rommeltabula127519@gmail.com Mariano Marcos State University Batac City, Philippines CONSTANTE S. SALASAC http://orcid.org 0000-0002-2506-8592 tantesalasac@gmail.com Mariano Marcos State University Batac City, Philippines ABSTRACT Pairwise scientific description of foreign and native languages can predict and describe the patterns that may cause learning difficulties. This study explored the descriptions of Ilokano personal pronouns in parallel with English and the contrastive structure in these two languages in which personal pronouns occur. Using descriptive-ethnographic research design, data were gathered from an informant who substantiated the categorized personal pronouns obtained from reliable materials. Results showed that Ilokano personal pronouns are structurally independent and incorporated into other parts of speech as suffixes. Contrastive analysis further found that Ilokano personal pronouns present special characteristics which differ significantly to their English counterparts. Firstly, Ilokano personal pronouns provide speakers with respectful forms of address in various contexts which is absent in English. Secondly, Ilokano pronoun suffixes -ak, -ko, and -k are applied to all tenses and moods while English personal Vol. 19 · January 2015 Print ISSN 2012-3981 • Online ISSN 2244-0445 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7719/jpair.v19i1.313 Journal Impact: H Index = 3 from Publish or Perish JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research is produced by PAIR, an ISO 9001:2008 QMS certified by AJA Registrars, Inc. 94 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research pronouns take the free morpheme in all cases. Thirdly, the Ilokano subject affects the verb form and the object suffix whereas English verb structure remains unchanged except for the third person singular and the object pronoun. Lastly, pronouns are common to all genders in Ilokano while this matters in English. Thus, Ilokano and English personal pronouns manifest parallel characteristics but have distinct differences in some aspects. Keywords - Linguistics, contrastive analysis, Ilokano personal pronouns, descriptive-ethnographic design, Batac City, Philippines INTRODUCTION Language, which is a very complex thing and cannot yet be exactly accounted for by anyone within one wholly consistent and comprehensive theory, is a vehicle for communication. Without language, people cannot understand each other. They make use of language for them to be able to communicate with others within their elaborate social and cultural structure. Different races speak different languages like Danish for Denmark, Scottish for Scots, English for British and Americans, Spanish for Spaniards and Latin Americans, Arabic for Arabians and Egyptians, Filipino for Pilipinos, and Ilokano for Ilocanos. However, language is not solely a language. If a language has its different kinds, it also has its various grammatical structures such as words, phrases, and clauses. In studying words, it is very significant to give distinct focus on the classes of words because they are ultimately symbols. Though they are symbolisms of things, they do not represent things at all times. They are spoken sounds or written representation of sounds that people have agreed to stand for something else. Thus, by mutual consent, people make anything stand for anything. Language as a means of communication is intertwined with culture and the degree by which it is used. It determines the attitude to the function and use of drills, the giving of grammatical explanations, and the value of repetition and learning by heart. Hinton (2001) pointed out that language is the key and heart of culture. Many people want to learn their own native language to understand their traditional cultural practices and values. Hillier (2003) argued that a relationship exists between language, cultural context and usability. The structures of language emanate from interconnected patterns of experience, social interaction, and cognitive mechanisms (Beckner et al., 2009). 95 International Peer Reviewed Journal The skills that a language attempts to develop are presumably those which society thought appropriate language. Unacceptable or inappropriate language prevents learners from interacting or communicating satisfactorily with other members of a given community. They may fail to achieve their ends or to communicate and be understood. They may even offend or make themselves ridiculous. These probable scenarios are common to all foreign and second language learners. It is because language and culture are connected in several intimate and dynamic ways. Further, language is a product of culture, but simultaneously, the culture is shaped by how the language allows people to view it. Hence, an Ilocano learning how to use words such as English personal pronouns may commit some of these inevitable language and culture-related errors. It is because Ilokano personal pronouns display a number of grammatical particularities and complications not found in its English pronoun counterparts. Some of them can only be used in certain circumstances. Others may change form depending on surrounding words and their placement in largely unrelated to the placement of the nouns they replace. Thus, the study attempts to determine the parallel descriptions of Ilokano and English personal pronouns and to ascertain their distinct differences. FRAMEWORK Presently, not much has been written on the systematic comparison of pronouns in Ilokano and English. However, a brief summary of the works done on problems related to those dealt within the present study are herein presented. These are published researches that compared English with other languages but in different perspectives, to determine whether the results of the comparison between the English native speakers and non-native speakers coincide. Kuo (1999) conducted an empirical study of personal pronouns in scientific journal articles. He found that first-person plural pronouns are the most frequently used types of personal pronouns. His further analysis on first-person plural pronouns showed that they can have a number of semantic references and perform multiple functions in the journal article. According to him, the use of second-person, third-person, and indefinite pronouns manifest the intention of the writer to stress solidarity with, and secure cooperation from readers. Kitagawa and Lehrer (1990) posited that the English personal pronouns you, we, and I  can be used as impersonal pronouns in discourse situations considering structural knowledge and general truths. According to them, the stylistic and 96 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research rhetorical differences among these pronouns follow from their deictic use. Kim (2009), on the other hand, presented a corpus-based cross-cultural text analysis on the use of personal pronouns in English and Korean texts. His analysis revealed that quantitative and qualitative differences exist in the use of the first person and second person plural forms. He argued that the differences could be due to the syntactic dissimilarities between the two languages or their socio- cultural contexts. In 1996, Niimura and Hayashi examined the English and Japanese demonstrative pronouns in reference to traditional grammatical explanations and modern alternative models. They conceived this study as an offshoot of their findings on previous research that advanced Japanese learners are problematic with the use of demonstratives in discourse reference. It was yielded in their contrastive analysis that psychological proximity determines the language systems of both English and Japanese. However, referent-focus is the critical determinant in English while situation-focus is the overriding factor in Japanese. In the same year, Garces (1996) explored the rhetorical differences between texts written in English by scholars with different cultural backgrounds. Results of the contrastive text-linguistic study revealed an intercultural variation in the rhetorical preferences of academics despite the required relative uniformity of scholarly papers. Findings further showed that Anglo-American academics use more metatext compared to their Spanish-speaking counterparts. It also indicated that Anglo-Americans tend to be more reader-oriented writers and impose more explicit textual rhetoric. The Spanish-speaking writers, however, emphasize propositional content, favor a more objective style of writing and tend towards implicit texts. Espinoza (1997), on the other hand, contrasted the passive voice patterns of the simple, continuous, and perfect tenses of Spanish and English in scientific prose. She determined the non-corresponding elements that predict difficulties in acquiring Spanish as L2 for native English speakers and English as L2 for literal Spanish. Her analysis revealed that passive voice patterns showed positive transfer between the English and the literal Spanish equivalents which were assumed to be easily acquired by both learners. She also discovered that perfect tense patterns displayed a verbatim match in two elements of the English and non-literal Spanish counterparts which predicted intermediate difficulty for the learners. However, she found that English continuous patterns demonstrated a correspondence with just one element of the non-literal Spanish forms which indicated high difficulty for the two learners. Moreover, she noticed that there 97 International Peer Reviewed Journal was no occurrence of correspondence between the English simple tenses and the non-literal Spanish forms which also indicated high difficulty for these learners. Similarly, Tarone, Dwyer, Gillette and Icke (1998) examined the frequency of the active and passive voices of the verb in two astrophysics journal papers. Their analysis revolved on the occurrence of we plus an active verb and passive verb forms in both logical argument paper and standard experimental paper. Their findings commenced that astrophysics papers in Russian texts use passive and active voice equivalent to English language. Considering the structure of the logical argument paper, they proposed four rhetorical functions of the passive as contrasted to we plus an active verb. According to Tarone et al. (1998), the passive voice indicates standard or established procedure while the we verb form reflects the author’s alternative procedure. The passive voice is used to describe the work of others; in contrast, the we verb form is considered in describing the author’s work. Further, the passive describes the proposed studies of the author. Lastly, the function of the active or the passive is determined by focus due to textual consideration or discourse emphasis. Fontecha and Catalan (2003) conducted a contrastive cognitive analysis of the metaphorical usages of particular animal pairs to ascertain whether English and Spanish conceptualize them equally. Their analysis disclosed that the paired animal examples were indeed metaphorically applied to persons in both languages though they were remarkably different within each language. It was also found that some semantic derogation appeared in the two languages. Further, it was observed that the samples analyzed were not equally applied to males and females. The main metaphorical meanings of the male terms connote better qualities compared to those of the female terms. Finally, differences exist in the degree and kind of semantic derogation found in both languages. Recently, Levshina, Geeraerts and Speelman (2013) demonstrated the common interface of verb and noun classes in contrastive Construction Grammar. They compared the English and Dutch analytic causatives in mapping constructional spaces. It was unveiled in their analyses that an average Dutch analytic causative reflects an implicitness and abstract causation with fewer animate as contrasted to English. It was also shown that the languages cut the common conceptual space in authentic manners, although there was a substantial overlapping of the semantic aspects of many English and Dutch constructions. However, commonalities exist in the form-meaning mapping between the two languages. Both English and Dutch constructions with more indirect causes or abstractions are significantly related with animate causes. A correlation between the directness of causation 98 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research and the cross-linguistic hierarchy of affectedness marking was also observed. In like manner, Farsi and Zarei (2013) investigated the extent of Iranian students in committing errors in English relative clauses. Central to their investigation was categorizing the types and frequency of errors on the use of English relative clauses. The study revealed that the errors of these learners resulted from interlingual difficulties in L2 acquisition. It also identified problems in distinguishing restrictive from non-restrictive relative clauses. Though differences were manifested between English and Persian relative clauses, the analysis yielded some teaching pedagogies to increase accuracy in using relative clauses. With these various themes of contrastive studies undertaken by previous researchers, the present study dealt with personal pronouns as the core of the investigation. The paucity of studies on contrastive analysis of personal pronouns necessitated the pursuit of this study. Since this research is local and first of its kind, it contributes literatures not only in the area of contrastive linguistics but also in the fields of second language acquisition and mother language education. It also provides an adequate model of comparison and some practical guidelines for ESL teachers in determining effective teaching strategies and designing efficient course materials. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY The study aimed to describe the form, function, and distribution of Ilokano and English personal pronouns and the environment in which these forms occur. It also delved into the contrastive structure in these two languages in which personal pronouns occur. METHODOLOGY Research Setting The study was conducted during the summer of 2013 that is, April to May, in barangay Mariit, a community where the early inhabitants of Batac had settled. The research site was purposively considered with the assumption that the language of the settlers is seemingly less adulterated. Meaning, the language is in some way still genuine and original due to less contact with speakers of other languages. The City of Batac, where this community lies, is a fourth-class city in the province of Ilocos Norte, Philippines. It is popularly known as the “Home 99 International Peer Reviewed Journal of Great Leaders” for it is the hometown of many significant figures in the Philippine history. Famous among them is Ferdinand E. Marcos, the former Philippine president who ruled the country for more than two decades. It is also the birthplace of Fr. Gregorio Aglipay, the founder of Philippine Independent Church, and Gen. Antonio Ricarte, the “Father of Philippine Army”. Research Design In carrying out this study, the descriptive-ethnographic research design was used to obtain detailed and elaborate description of Ilokano personal pronouns. The researchers immersed themselves in the community to gather data for contrastive analysis. Accordingly, descriptive-ethnography is based almost entirely on fieldwork. The researchers usually live among the people who are the subjects of the study, learning the language and participating in everyday life while striving to maintain a degree of objective detachment. The researchers usually cultivate close relationships with informants who can provide specific information on aspects of their cultural life. In this research, the major techniques used in data collection included multiple approaches such as interviews, observations, participant observation and field notes. The study involved the following steps: 1) The researchers made an extensive list of Ilokano personal pronouns found in the books of Rosal (1982) and Widdoes (1950); 2) A key informant woman, aged 91 years old, supplemented the enlisted personal pronouns; 3) These Ilokano pronouns were grouped and categorized according to their form, function, and distribution; 4) A contrastive analysis of Ilokano and English personal pronouns was made. Similarities and differences of both languages were listed down; and 5) A hierarchy of difficulties for Ilocano learning English was also prepared. Research Instrument The Ilokano language analyzed in this study is the variety spoken in the speech community of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines. This other half of the old Ilocos Province is believed as the origin of Ilokano dispersing northward and southward. Two important books served as instruments in eliciting the data. The first is Understanding an Exotic Language: Ilokano authored by Dr. Nicholas L. Rosal (1982). This book presents the word formation and grammar of the Ilocano language. The second is Dr. Howard W. Widdoes’ (1950) A Brief Introduction to the Grammar of the Ilocano Language, which contains common terms and phrases in Ilokano. Complementing these materials, a note pad was used to write down 100 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research incidental interface of Ilokano personal pronouns in the ordinary conversations with the key informant. Key Informant In coming up with the desired results of the study, the researchers made use of a key informant, who is a 91 years old woman. The identification of the key informant was based on the following criteria: a) must be a native Ilokano speaker, whose parents are pure Ilocanos; b) must never left the Ilocos since birth; c) must be residing in the rural area; and d) must be semi-literate. The nativeness of the Ilokano language was the primary concern in the selection of the said informant. Hence, such desired characteristics were considered with the belief that these make her less influenced by other languages. For ethical considerations, informed consent was solicited from the key informant by signing an assent form prior to the conduct of the study. The researchers observed the daily activities of the key informant. They elicited data through participant observation and ordinary conversations with her. They recorded incidental occurrences of Ilokano personal pronouns during their interactions and added to those gathered from Rosal’s (1982) and Widdoes’ (1950) books. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The theoretical analysis of the data consists of two parts. Part I presents parallel descriptions of Ilokano and English personal pronouns. Part II presents the contrastive of structure in the two languages where personal pronouns occur. Descriptions of Ilokano and English Personal Pronouns This portion of the analysis describes the form, function and distribution of personal pronouns and the environments in which these forms occur. The Ilokano Personal Pronouns Structurally, Ilokano personal pronouns are of two kinds: those that can stand alone like siak, sika, isu, dakami, dakayo, isuda; and those that are incorporated into other parts of speech as suffixes -ak, -ko,and -k.Personal pronouns that can stand alone as objects or direct objects provide emphasis and sometimes are used to avoid ambiguity. Depending on the context, they may be inclusive of the linking verb ‘to be’ and even imply the nominative complement ‘the one/s’. 101 International Peer Reviewed Journal Table 1. Ilokano personal pronouns that can stand alone Number Ilokano Personal Pronoun English Counterpart Singular Siak I, I am, I am the one. Sika You, You are, You are the one. Isu He/She/It, He/She/It is, He/She/It is the one. Plural Dakami (exclusive of a person) We, We are, We are the ones. Data (inclusive of a person, spoken to) _ Dakayo You, You are, You are the ones. Isuda They, They are, They are the ones. When these pronouns imply the nominative complement ‘the one/s’ and are followed by a phrase or clause, ‘ti’ is used to link them to the other parts of the sentence. For instance, ‘Sika ti mapan’ (You are the one to go.); and ‘Dakami ti ay-ayatem’ (We are the ones you love). As a subject of a sentence or an action verb, a pronoun can take the form of a suffix directly attached to the root. There are three sets of suffixes under this category: -ak, -ko, and -k. The -ak suffix form is used for sentences having a pronoun as a subject and the verb ‘to be’ as the implied predicate. It is used with the ma, ag and um and their verb clusters. Table 2. The –ak forms of Ilokano personal pronouns Ilokano Personal Pronoun Example Word Formation -ak‘I’ Taoak predicate + suffix Agsalaak ag verb + suffix Umapalak um verb + suffix -ka ‘you’ Taoka predicate + suffix Agsalaka ag verb + suffix Umapalka um verb + suffix -kami ‘we’ (exclusive) Taokami predicate + suffix Agsalakami ag verb + suffix Umapalkami um verb + suffix -tayo ‘we’ (inclusive) Taotayo predicate + suffix Agsalatayo ag verb + suffix 102 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research Umapaltayo um verb + suffix -ta ‘we’ (dual) Taota predicate + suffix Agsalata ag verb + suffix Umapalta um verb + suffix -kayo ‘you’ Taokayo predicate + suffix Agsalakayo ag verb + suffix Umapalkayo um verb + suffix -da ‘they’ Taoda predicate + suffix Agsalata ag verb + suffix Umapalda um verb + suffix The –ak form applies to sentences in which the nominative is an adjective, and the subject is a pronoun. For example, ‘Nagaget kayo.’ (You are diligent.). When the sentence has more than one nominative complement or verb, the suffix is added to the last complement of the verb. For instance, ‘Nagaget ken natudyokayo.’ (You are diligent and obedient.). The –ko suffix form of subject pronoun is affixed to the family of i verbs. Table 3. The –ko forms of Ilokano personal pronouns Ilokano Personal Pronoun English Counterpart Example Word Formation -ko I Isadagko ‘I lean’ i verb + suffix -mo You Isadagmo ‘You lean’ i verb + suffix -na He, She, It Isadagna ‘He/She/It leans’ i verb + suffix -mi (inclusive) We (inclusive) Isadagmi ‘We lean’ i verb + suffix -tayo We Isadagtayo ‘We lean’ i verb + suffix -ta (dual) We (dual) Isadagta ‘We lean’ i verb + suffix -yo You Isadagyo ‘You lean’ i verb + suffix -da They Isadagda ‘They lean’ i verb + suffix As illustrated on the table, the –ko forms of Ilokano personal pronouns make use of other affixes to indicate the person and number. Regardless of this feature, the –ko dependent Ilokano personal pronoun is attached to the i verb family. The –k suffix form of Ilokano personal pronoun is used for en and an verbs. For example, ‘pakawanek’ (I forgive.) from ‘pakawanen’ (Forgive him.) ‘Pangalaak’ 103 International Peer Reviewed Journal from ‘pangalaan’ (I get it.) This dependent form of Ilokano personal pronouns involves dropping the n from the root and adding the -k suffix. The English Personal Pronouns Francis (1958) classified English pronouns as a separate part of speech because of their morphological difference from nouns. He classified pronouns into eight: I, we, you, he, she, it, they, and who. All of them have inflectional variants, but they do not have the (-es) plural and the (‘s) possessive characteristics of most other nouns. Instead, they have forms that are commonly called the objective (or accusative) and the first and second possessives. All these pronouns except who are frequently classed as personal pronouns. It is a distinction borrowed from the grammar of other languages that have other groups of different classes of pronoun. Francis (1958) further stated that all these pronouns to some degree, but especially the third person pronouns he, she, it and they, commonly function as noun-substitutes. They can substitute virtually all other nouns in all structures, according to patterns which provide an important classification of nouns. They resemble function words in having little or the linguistic and non-linguistic context in which they occur, to a greater degree than do most other words. Table 4. Classification of English personal pronouns Subjective Objective First Possessive Second Possessive I me my mine We us our ours You your yours He him his She Her hers It its They Them their theirs Who who(m) whose From the table, only three of the English personal pronouns I, we, and they have four distinct forms. The rest you, he, she and who have three forms that are variously distributed; and it has two. You and it both double as subjective and objective forms, her as objective and possessive, and his, its and whose as first 104 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research and second possessives. It is possible to describe the members of the pronoun paradigm in terms of stems + inflectional suffixes, but the description is somewhat too complicated (Francis, 1958). Pronouns are classified by persons. The I and we denote the speaker. Both singular and plural you include the person spoken to, but exclude the speaker. He, she, it, and they exclude both speaker and person. These are useful distinctions as in the denoting of we and they as plural, although the term plural has a different sense from plural applied to nouns. Thus, the meaning of the noun plural suffix (-es) can be roughly stated as more than one of whatever is denoted by the stem. However, the meaning of we is not more than one I. According to Francis (1958), it may be ‘I and you,’ ‘I and he,’ ‘I and you and they,’ or ‘I and my associates,’ etc. The following are the recognized substitute groups in present-day English with some dialectical variations in the assignment of words to the various groups. Table 5. Dialectical variations of English personal pronouns Dialectical Variation Noun Referents he – they man, father, uncle, brother, waiter she – they woman, mother, aunt, sister, waitress it – they house, tree, poem, friendship, complication he/she – they parent, child, artist, teacher, friend he/it – they bull, ram, roaster, buck, steer she/it – they cow, ewe, hen, doe he/she/it – they baby, dog, cat, one it/they – they group, committee, team, gang, class he/she/they – they(or no plural) somebody, someone, anybody, everybody it (no plural) dirt, mathematics, poetry, music they (no singular) pants, scissors, pliers, clothes, people This classification is based chiefly on meaning. Hence, personal pronouns are sensitive to changes in the social environment that brings about changes in the referents of nouns. This case is true among occupations formerly restricted to men. Comparison and Contrast of Ilokano and English Personal Pronouns Contrastive analysis aims to present certain types of comparison and contrast between two or more languages. The Ilokano and English personal pronouns 105 International Peer Reviewed Journal possess some similarities and differences in terms of form, function, and distribution. This was done in view of the fact that this might have pedagogical implications in the preparation of teaching materials and designing of syllabi for language courses. Linguistic interference or negative transfer occurring in second language (L2) learning and use is believed to be the function of structural differences holding between the native and the target language. Fisiak (1981) propounded that the attained proficiency in L2 (i.e. the target language) will be some joint function of attained proficiency in L1 (i.e. the native language), training in L1, training in L2, and the structural relationship between L1 and L2. Ilokano personal pronouns present unique characteristics which differ significantly to that of English. Firstly, the usage patterns exhibit characteristics that may be considered significant social and linguistic in nature. Evidently, Ilokano personal pronouns provide speakers with respectful forms of address. ‘Dakayo’ which means you (plural) or ‘sika’ meaning you (singular) and ‘isuda’ for they (plural) or ‘isu’ for he, she, and it (singular) illustrate the Ilocano culture of respect. There are also three forms of first person plural in Ilokano to indicate three various situations. Tayo form (inclusive) expresses the inclusion of both the speaker and the persons spoken to in the pronoun tayo (we). Kami form (exclusive) denotes the exclusion of the person spoken to. Ta form indicates the inclusion of just the speaker and one person spoken to. These characteristics of Ilokano personal pronouns do not exist in English for it has one form for each of the categories above. However, Kuo (1999) posited that first-person plural pronouns can have a number of semantic references and perform multiple functions in the journal article. His findings revealed that the exclusive we was used strategically to refer to writers themselves and the inclusive we to refer to either writers and readers or the discipline as a whole for different communicative purposes.  Secondly, there are three sets of Ilokano personal suffixes: -ak, -ko, and -k which are applied to all tenses and moods. English personal pronouns take the form of a free morpheme in all cases. The -ak, -ko and -k forms have their restricted environment. The –ak form is used for sentences having pronoun as a subject and the verb to be as the implied predicate, ma-, ag-, and um- verbs and their verb clusters, and sentences in which the nominative complement is an adjective and the subject is a pronoun. The –ko form of subject pronoun is affixed to the family of i verbs. The -k suffix is used for en and an verbs. For instance, ‘pakawanek’ (I forgive) from ‘pakawanen’ (to forgive) involves dropping 106 JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research the n from the root and adding the -k suffix. In English, the subject of the verb does not change the structure of the verb except for the third person singular and the object pronoun. In the sentence, ‘We like you,’ the object ‘you’ could be substituted with another pronoun object without changing the structure ‘we have.’ Kuo (1999) noted in his study that the use of second-person, third-person, and indefinite pronouns manifest the intention of the researcher to stress solidarity with, and secure cooperation from readers. In contrast, the Ilokano subject affects both the verb form and the object suffix. The verb forms used in these irregular processes to affixation is that of en and an verbs serving as basic roots like ‘alaen’ (to get) and ‘tulungan’ (to help). Lastly, pronouns are common to all genders in Ilokano. This linguistic characteristic also applies to many Philippine languages and dialects. It also often lends itself to confusion in the use of pronouns in other languages including English. The free pronoun forms in the nominative case duplicate the first syllable to express the idea of being alone as in ‘sisiak’ (I myself ) and ‘siksika’ (You yourself ). This feature of the Ilokano personal pronouns is approximately equivalent to the English reflexive pronouns, or the otherwise known ‘self ’ forms. This description is used for emphatic statements both in Ilokano and English. CONCLUSIONS Language is a rule-governed behavior and learning a language involves internalizing the rules. However, the ability or inclination to formulate the rules apparently interferes with the performance that is supposed to lead to making the application of the rules automatic. For in the use of personal pronouns, certain rules have to be met in each language. The usage patterns of Ilokano personal pronouns exhibit significant social and linguistic characteristics. The Ilokano personal pronouns are either independently structured or affixed to other parts of speech. The independent Ilokano personal pronouns indicate various situations while the affixed pronouns restrict their own environment and are applied to all tenses and moods. The Ilokano and English personal pronouns may have parallel forms, function, and distribution yet they have very distinct differences in several aspects having belonged to a separate set of families. Contrastive analysis as a branch of linguistics plays several key roles in the teaching-learning process. It can predict errors for which the teacher could remedy 107 International Peer Reviewed Journal before such errors are fossilized. It also contributes to the designing of syllabi adapted to the classroom situation. Furthermore, it helps in the preparation of teaching materials aimed at reducing interlanguage difficulties in L2 acquisition. TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH The researchers view this study as a starting point for further research. Several aspects of this study are open to extension and investigation. From the findings, the teachers could gain useful information in predicting and diagnosing a proportion of the L2 errors committed by learners with a common L1. It is on this basis that teachers would organize feedback to the learners and the work to eliminate linguistic interference. Disseminating the results would develop cultural advancement programs and create greater language awareness among young individuals. Since the Department of Education prescribed mother tongue in Grades 1-3 and apparently materials are lacking, it is imperative to conduct researches along Ilokano personal pronouns and other function words. For the time being, the teachers should utilize the research-based descriptions of personal pronouns as materials in teaching Ilokano grammar. LITERATURE CITED Beckner, C., Blythe, R., Bybee, J., Christiansen, M. H., Croft, W., Ellis, N. C., Holland, J., Ke, J., Larsen-Freeman, D., & Schoenemann, T. (2009), Language Is a Complex Adaptive System: Position Paper. Language Learning, 59, 1–26. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00533.x Espinoza, A. M. (1997). 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