only appears in loan words from English and Spanish and occurs in free variation with . Similarly, the sound is a variant of and its occurrence might have been brought by the interaction with the Tagalog language and the incorporation of Spanish and English loan words in Masbatenyo language. The glottal stop is the conventional onset of the orthographically vowel-initial words, thus vowels cannot occur in initial position. They only occur in medial and final position. There are two major syllable patterns in Masbatenyo, namely, open syllable /C(C)V, (C(C)VC)/ and closed syllable /CVC/. Most root words in Masbatenyo are disyllabic (they are composed of two syllables) and follows the CV(C).CV(C) pattern. There are monosyllabic words; however, most of them are functors that have no lexical meaning. Most of the disyllabic words contain an affix, reduplicated or compound. Masbatenyo also has a suprasegmental phoneme, the stress, which is characterized by vowel length. The acoustic analysis of stress correlates using Praat showed that duration is the most consistent factor that characterizes stress. Stressed syllables are longer than their unstressed counterparts. The diphthongs in Masbatenyo are: in 'soup', in 'soot', in 'house', and or in 'pig'. Consonant clusters are non-native to Masbatenyo phonology. Their occurrence in the language is brought by the entry of borrowed words from Spanish and English. The form of a morpheme can changed when they are combined to form words or phrases. Such changes are called mophophonemic changes. Among these changes are: vowel deletion; contraction of particles and , assimilation, metathesis, epenthesis and degemination. Grammar Word formation Masbatenyo provides support for the claim that root words are pre-categorial or neutral by themselves. Take the following examples: 'big (size, abstract)' is a root which can express a property or state, as seen in: 'His house is big'. But it can also be combined with certain affixes to form a process verb in: 'His pet has grown already.' It can also combine with a determiner, , to form a noun in the context: 'I didn't see his child growing up.' is considered a verb when used in command form: 'Run!' But it can be analyzed as a noun in forms such as . 'His truck runs slowly.' Masbatenyo employs the following operations in deriving new words: Affixation, the process to which an affix is attached to a root or an 'intermediate stem; e.g. + m- > 'ugly'; Reduplication, the repetition of