Arta is a highly endangered
Negrito language of the northern
Philippines.
Distribution
Lawrence Reid's 1990 fieldwork revealed only 12 speakers in Villa Santiago,
Aglipay,
Quirino Province, and in 1992 it was spoken by only three families. It is not closely related to other languages.
There are still small groups of Arta speakers in
Maddela and
Nagtipunan towns of
Quirino Province
Quirino, officially the Province of Quirino ( ilo, Probinsia ti Quirino; tl, Lalawigan ng Quirino), is a landlocked province in the Philippines located in the Cagayan Valley region in Luzon. Its capital is Cabarroguis. It is named after Elpi ...
(Lobel 2013:88).
[Lobel, Jason William. 2013]
''Philippine and North Bornean languages: issues in description, subgrouping, and reconstruction''
Ph.D. dissertation. Manoa: University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Kimoto (2017)
[Kimoto, Yukinori / 木本幸憲. 2017]
''A Grammar of Arta: A Philippine Negrito Langage''
/ フィリピンネグリート言語、アルタ語の文法. Ph.D dissertation, Kyoto University. reports that Arta has 10 native speakers and 35–45 second-language speakers living primarily in Pulang Lupa, Kalbo, and in Disimungal, Nagtipunan.
The Arta are found in the following places within
Nagtipunan Municipality.
[Kimoto, Yukinori]
A preliminary report on the grammar of Agta
*Nagtipunan Municipality
**Disimungal Barangay
***Purok Kalbo
***Pulang Lupa
***Tilitilan
**San Ramos Barangay
**Pongo Barangay
**Sangbay Barangay
Arta is in contact with
Casiguran Agta,
Nagtipunan Agta,
Yogad
Yogad is an Austronesian language spoken primarily in Echague, Isabela and other nearby towns in the province in northern Philippines. The 1990 census claimed there were around 16,000 speakers.
Classification
Anthropologist H. Otley Beyer desc ...
, Ilokano, and Tagalog.
Phonology
Arta is notable for having