Tense-Lax Vowels Perception of Malay Speakers Learning
English
Nasrun bin Alias
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
Any speaker learning a second language will have problems
in listening to utterances in that language. It is not that they
don't understand the meaning of the utterances but it is the
case of their perception of sounds uttered in the second
language. This is due to the fact that they perceive the world
around them differently based on their experiences and
expectations. The aim of this paper is to discuss (i) vowel
duration of non-proficient Malay speakers and (ii) their
perceptions on vowel duration. Malay speakers learning
English are found to have problems in discriminating vowel
duration. The issue will be addressed within the Associative
Store Model framework (Tatham, 1988).
On the Unity or Non-Unity of ber-
Norhaida Bt. Aman
University of Delaware, Newark, USA
In this paper, the nature of the verbal morpheme ber- in
Malay, especially in the dialect spoken predominantly in
Singapore and the southern state of Malaysia, Johor, is
studied in detail. Ber- occurs in a heterogeneous variety of
constructions which include reflexives, derived intransitives
and decausatives, as well as in denominal verbs. The
objective of this paper is to attempt to provide a unified
account for all instances of ber-.
I propose that the presence of ber- is not due to the
application of any particular syntactic or lexical process such
as reflexivization or detransitivization. Rather, it signals the
existence of a disparity between the argument structure and
the syntax: When ber- is present, an argument found in the
thematic structure is absent in the syntax. However, the
choice of which argument is absent depends on the
particular lexical rule which has been applied. Thus, ber-
has the effect of indicating the occurrence of any of a
number of lexical rules that create such a disparity.
A 'Bank of Malaysian and Indonesian Languages': A Modest
Proposal
Ed Anderson
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
From my frustrating attempts to analyze 60+ spoken
Indonesian texts in 1983 (The Meaning of Variation in
Indonesian, NUSA Linguistic Studies of Indonesian and Other
Languages of Indonesia 15, Part VII: Jakarta) and 60+
spoken texts of Sundanese (Speech Levels: The Case of
Sundanese. Pragmatics 3:2, June 1993), the time has now
arrived when it appears that we have the technological
power to work with large corpuses of language text in a
systematic and more comprehensive manner. This is an
extremely important and most welcome sign for all of us
because it will enable us to test our preliminary hypotheses
about language related phenomena and to expand on the
conclusions of our own and colleagues' studies accumulated
to date. In general, this development should increase our
understanding of how language is used in society by making
it possible to share not only conclusions with colleagues but
also language corpuses on which such conclusions are based.
My own research interests, for example, include register
analysis of Indonesian and Sundanese and for this I am
becoming increasingly interested in the power which Corpus
Linguistics offers me for handling linguistic questions at all
levels of interest.
In my paper, I will present a review of two recent works in
the area which I expect will provide a basis for further
discussion with colleagues. I am particularly interested in
discussing the establishment of a Bank of Malaysian and
Indonesian Languages which would be of immense benefit
to us all.
References:
Edwards, Jane A. & Martin D. Lampert (eds). 1993. Talking
Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research.
Hillsdale, N.J: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Stubbs, Michael. 1996. Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-
Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Blackwell
Publishers, Ltd.
Affixes, Austronesian and Iconicity in Malay
Geoffrey Benjamin
National University of Singapore, Singapore
This is a follow-up to the author's paper (1993) on the
sociolinguistics of Malay verbal affixation. Explanations are
offered for the puzzling differences between the form and
meaning of the Malay affixes and those of the broader
Austronesian affixal system from which they derive. It is
suggested that a degree of phonetic iconicity is involved in
the encoding of meanings that have both language-internal
and social significance.
A Non-Linear Approach to Nasal Spreading in Malay and
Indonesian Languages
Carol Bloomfield
Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia
Non-linear phonology - in particular, autosegmental
phonology and metrical phonology - are said to provide a
link between phonetics and phonology; reduce the
abstractness of underlying phonological representations and
reduce the need for specific rule-ordering.
Non-linear phonology is thought to provide a more precise
linguistic analysis of a language, and can be applied to both
tonal and atonal languages. Phonological phenomena such as
nasalisation, gemination, degemination, metathesis, the
occurrence of the glottal stop and syllable structure related
phenomena can be more easily exemplified. More
generalisations can be included in an analysis of
phonological data using non-linear phonology, which also
has the potential to establish links relevant to psychological
and other linguistic theories pertaining to syntax and
morphology.
Forms of non-linear phonology, such as autosegmental
phonology, evolved because of the perceived inadequacies
of generative phonology (discussed further later).Using any
phonological theory a linguist should be able to express the
phonological relationship between a native speaker's
behaviour and the many facets of a native speaker's
linguistic abilities in a clear concise manner. Being able to
include as much information as possible is not always
achievable using SGP. N-LP provides an opportunity to
clarify many linguistic phenomena that will not adjust to a
universal language mold. In this presentation I intend to
focus on the phenomena of nasal spreading in Indonesian
and Malaysian languages and dialects using a non-linear
approach.
Peter Cole, Gabriella Hermon & Norhaida Bte. Aman
University of Delaware, Newark, USA
The Malay language is blessed with a variety of ways of
forming information (WH) questions. In addition to WH-in-
situ questions like
(1) Ali membeli apa?
Ali buy what
'What did Ali buy?'
there exist two types of questions in which the question
word appears at the beginning of the clause over which it
has scope:
(2) Apa Ali beli?
what Ali buy
'What did Ali buy?'
(3) Apa yang Ali beli?
what that Ali buy
'What did Ali buy?'
This paper addresses the question of what the correct
analysis is for questions like (3).
Two potential analyses of (3) come to mind. According to
the first analysis, which we shall refer to as the Null
Complementizer Hypothesis, (2) and (3) are both derived
from a structure like that of English WH questions, in which
(3) consists of a single clause, apa occupies the Spec of CP of
that clause and yang (when present) occupies C. The only
difference between (2) and (3) is that in (2) the
complementizer is null while in (3) it is filled by yang. Thus,
according to the Null Complementizer Hypothesis, Malay WH
questions like (3) differ from those found in European
languages like English only in that Malay permits the comp
position in main clauses to be filled while English does not.
The second analysis, which we shall refer to as the Headless
Relative Clause Hypothesis, claims that while (2) does in fact
have a structure like that of English WH questions, sentences
like (3) have a very different structure. According to the
Headless Relative Clause Hypothesis, questions like (3) are
are nominal or null copula sentences like (4):
(4) Ali guru.
Ali teacher
'Ali is a teacher.'
We assume that (4) is an IP or small clause containing two
NPs, possibly related by an abstract verb 'be'. According to
the Headless Relative Clause analysis, (3) consists of two
NPs, [yang Ali beli] 'the thing that Ali bought' and apa 'what',
which are related in the same way Ali and guru are related
in (4).
While both analyses appear on initial examination to
provide plausible accounts of questions like (3) to the best of
our knowledge, there has never been a systematic
investigation of the arguments distinguishing among these
different treatments. In this paper we shall present a series
of arguments that support the Headless Relative Clause
Hypothesis over the Null Complementizer Hypothesis. We
then consider the question of whether the question word
apa originates as subject or predicate nominal, and whether
the headless relative clause involves movement of a
phonologically null operator to the specifier position of the
yang clause or a null resumptive pronoun which remains in
situ. We argue that the facts support a movement analysis
(along the lines of Kader 1976 and 1980).
Notes on Malay in the Natuna Islands
James T. Collins
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
In the center of the South China Sea, the Natuna Islands
have seldom been visited by scholars; consequently, almost
nothing is known about the Malay language spoken in these
remote islands. Scraps of information can be retrieved (for
example, in van Hesselt 1898) but these data are insufficient
for even a rough classification of the Malay variants spoken
there. As a preliminary step, data recently obtained from
Natuna Malays studying in Pontianak (Kalimantan Barat)
will be presented for discussion. Some of the phonetic
characteristics of three Natuna variants will be described.
Attention will also been given to the contrast between
citation and discursive forms, based on transcribed
recordings. These tentative considerations are set forth only
to mend temporarily the gaping hole in our emerging
picture of Malay in Southeast Asia.
When Fusion Fails: Prefix-Nesting in Malay
Ann Delilkan
New York University, New York, USA
Malay prefixation phenomena involve what in traditional
rule-based systems has long been described as nasal
assimilation followed by voiceless obstruent deletion at the
prefix-root boundary. This is meant to explain the following
nasal substitution facts:
meN + pukul > memukul meN +buat > membuat
+ tentu > menentu +desu > mendesu
+ kupas > mengupas +garam > menggaram
Such an analysis fails on two counts: It does not explain the
co-occurrence of the two processes it invokes, but merely
stipulates that they operate together. Also, it fails to account
for the fact that N-voicelessC sequences do appear root-
internally. Pater(1995) appeals to Correspondence Theory
within Optimality to account for these apparently conflicting
facts. He suggests that the nasal substitution facts be
reanalysed as fusion of the nasal and the voiceless
obstruent, and that the absence of root-internal 'fusion' be
explained 'by the greater phonological markedness of the
root morpheme relative to other morphological elements.'
This property is expressed in terms of a root-specific
ranking of a linearity constraint that blocks segmental
fusion.
I suggest that Pater's analysis is ultimately no less
stipulative than traditional analyses of the facts, but
regardless of that, the facts of prefix-nesting (thus far
largely overlooked in the literature) fail to be described in
his account altogether. Optimality theorists, and their non-
processual depiction of the selection of outputs, may not
appeal to cycles to explain the fact that nasal
substitution/fusion does not occur at the prefix-prefix
boundary. I posit an analysis that unites prefix-nesting facts
with root-internal data, to reflect a two-way contrast
between these environments, on the one hand, and the
prefix-root boundary, on the other. My analysis considers
homogeneity vs heterogeneity of morphological categories
per environment as the salient feature involved, and
suggests a constraint that fails to block 'fusion' at any but
the prefix-root boundary.
Word Order in Malay Sentences:
The Interplay of Communicative Dynamism and Systemic
Ordering
Zahrah Abd. Ghafur
Universiti Sains Malaysia
The most common description of Malay sentences is of the
SV and the SVO form. There's no doubt that these forms are
in abundance. But it is also true of other forms. There are
the so-called passive sentences, the inverted sentences and
the ellipses, even there are sentences without the V. In fact,
it is a widespread belief among the researchers of the
language that there are more passive sentences in most
original Malay texts than there are active sentences.
Anything to the contrary is the influence of other languages
especially the English language and it is not original.
Perhaps somewhat polluted.
This paper will try to describe this phenomenon from the
view of Functional Generative Description of the Prague
School. From this perspective, there are two most important
determinants of word order in a sentence: the
communicative dynamism (CD) and systemic ordering (SO).
The CD depends on the salience of an item while the SO is
specified by the grammar of the language. The interplay of
these two determinants determines the left to right word
order of a language described as having a free word order.
Since the word order in Malay is quite free, the author tries
to explain the phenomenon from this perspective. The
justification for it to be in Malay grammar is its regularity: it
is as regular as any other regular phenomenon in any
grammar.
The Prefixes di- and N- in Malay/Indonesian Dialects
David Gil
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia /
University of Delaware, Newark, USA
This paper presents a study of the syntax, semantics and
pragmatics of the prefixes di- and N- in Malay/Indonesian
dialects, introducing new data from the hitherto undescribed
Indonesian koinÈs spoken in the provinces of Riau, Sulawesi
Selatan and Irian Jaya.
According to the received view, based largely on the two
standardized languages of Malaysia and Indonesia, the
prefixes di- and N- (the latter usually occurring as part of
the complex prefix meN-) are markers of passive and active
voice respectively. Even with regard to the standard
languages, a number of scholars have pointed to various
problems with this view. However, when attention is
shifted away from these somewhat artificial registers and
towards the real colloquial varieties of Malay/Indonesian, it
becomes evident that a characterization of these prefixes as
passive and active markers can no longer be maintained.
The main part of this paper provides a detailed description
of the prefixes di- and N- in the Indonesian koinÈ spoken
throughout the province of Riau, based on a large corpus of
spontaneous speech specimens. Consider the following
paradigm:
(1) Anjing kejar kucing
dog chase cat
(2) Anjing dikejar kucing
dog di-chase cat
(3) Anjing ngejar kucing
dog N-chase cat
In Riau Indonesian, the above three sentences are truth-
functionally equivalent; specifically, all three are vague with
regard to the thematic roles of the two participants ãin
particular, either can be patient, and either can be actor.
Moreover, all three sentences are equivalent in terms of
definiteness and topicality: each of the two participants is
unmarked for definiteness, and either of the two may
constitute the topic of the sentence. Thus, the prefixes di-
and N- lack the central function of voice markers, namely,
selecting a particular argument as the subject of its clause.
So what, then, is the function of these two prefixes?
Detailed analysis of live discourse specimens suggests that
the role of the prefixes di- and N- is a purely semantic one:
marking the existence of a patient or actor respectively, thereby asserting its contextual saliency. A corollary of this
analysis is that these two prefixes should be able to cooccur
on the same form ã a prediction that is borne out by the
occasional occurrence of such doubly marked forms. A
further consequence of the proposed account is that, by
generalizing the thematic role of patient to include also the
theme of a locative expression, it is possible to provide a
single unified analysis for what are traditionally considered
to be two distinct but homophonous forms: the above-
mentioned prefix di- and the locative preposition di.
Preliminary evidence suggests that the role of the prefixes
di- and N- is similar in other Indonesian dialects. However,
the productivity of these two prefixes ã as reflected in the
number of forms to which they may attach and the
frequency of their use ã differs markedly from dialect to
dialect. Whereas in Riau di- is highly productive and N- of
somewhat lesser productivity, in Sulawesi Selatan di- is still
highly productive but N- is absent, while in Irian Jaya di- is
of low productivity and N-, again, is absent.
In conclusion, a formal representation of the prefixes di-
and N- is proposed, within the framework of a "non-
Eurocentric theory of grammar", whose overall goal is to
provide a detailed and extensive description of
Malay/Indonesian without imposing traditional grammatical
categories that are of no relevance to the language in
question. Within this framework, the different behaviour of
the prefixes di- and N- in the Indonesian koinÈs and the
standard languages is accounted for in terms of a preference
rule assigning headedness to binary semantic structures.
The different behaviour of the prefixes is thus shown to be
related in a principled way to other differences between
these dialects also resulting from different assignments of
headedness ã such as, for example, the occurrence of
internally- and right-headed relative clauses in Riau
Indonesian and other koinÈs, but not in the standardized
languages.
Towards a Typology of Malay/Indonesian Dialects
David Gil
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia /
University of Delaware, Newark, USA
Uri Tadmor
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA
The Malay/Indonesian dialectal landscape contains large
tracts of terra incognita: undescribed language varieties,
indeed even language varieties whose very existence has
remained unnoticed. This paper represents a preliminary
and necessarily tentative attempt to impose some kind of
order upon this bewildering diversity ã in the form of a
general classificatory scheme, or typology, of
Malay/Indonesian dialects.
The primary parameter in the typology is the lectal cline,
with the standardized versions of Malay and Indonesian
near the acrolectal pole, and all other dialects further down
the scale towards the basilectal pole. Among the basilectal
dialects, the next bifurcation is between varieties with a
diminished range of functions and no native speakers,
including Bazaar Malay, and varieties associated with a wide
range of functions and populations of native speakers ã
comprising most other Malay/Indonesian dialects. These
dialects, in turn, may be classified in accordance with two
independent dimensions pertaining to the ethnicity of their
speakers: (i) homogeneous vs. heterogeneous; and (ii) Malay
vs. non-Malay. The two end points of these two
independent scalar dimensions form a 2x2 matrix yielding
four idealized dialect types: (I) Ethnically homogeneous /
Malay dialects: generally spoken locally, by indigenous
populations, eg. Nonthaburi Malay, Siak Malay. (II)
Ethnically homogeneous / non-Malay dialects: typically
spoken by populations who have switched relatively
recently to Malay/Indonesian, eg. Baba Malay, Orang Asli
Malay. (III) Ethnically heterogeneous / Malay dialects:
characteristically spoken in urban centres or other regions
which have been targets of recent migrations, eg.
Singaporean Malay, Kuala Lumpur Malay. (IV) Ethnically
heterogeneous / non-Malay dialects: instantiated by some of
the modern Indonesian koinÈs, specifically those spoken in
regions to which few or no Malays have migrated, eg. Sulsel
(Sulawesi Selatan) Indonesian, Irian Indonesian. In
addition, between types (III) and (IV) is an important
intermediate group of ethnically heterogeneous / Malay-
plus-non-Malay dialects, exemplified by various other
Indonesian koinÈs, eg. Riau Indonesian, Kaltim (Kalimantan
Timur) Indonesian.
The second part of this paper focuses on the latter types of
dialects, namely the Indonesian koinÈs. For the most part,
the existence of such koinÈs has remained unacknowledged
in the scholarly literature; accordingly, little or nothing is
known of their linguistic structure. Thus, for example, a
linguistic atlas of Riau province will characterize it as being
populated by ethnic Malays, speaking one or more varieties
of Sumatran Malay. However, in reality, a majority of the
population of this province consists of non-Malay migrants
from other provinces: primarily Minangkabau, but also
Batak, Javanese, Bugis and others. Accordingly, the common
language of the province, and a native language of its
younger inhabitants, is an Indonesian koinÈ, namely Riau
Indonesian. The distinctiveness of Riau Indonesian is
illustrated by means of a phonological, grammatical and
lexical checklist, showing how the Riau koinÈ differs, on the
one hand from indigenous varieties of Riau Malay, and, on
the other hand from other Indonesian koinÈs spoken in
other provinces.
Subjectless Sentences in Malay
Mashudi Kader
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
The paper considers some existential, metereological and other
sentences within the cluster of "kelihatan" (seems) as in (1) through (3):
1. Sudah ada seekor ular di dalam lubang itu.
"There is already a snake in thehole."
2. Sedang hujan lebat sekarang.
"It is raining heavily now."
3. Keliatannya wanita itu sedang hamil.
"It looks that the lady is pregnant."
It is observed that the sentences do not have any overt NP as the subject.
These sentences together with other sentences with adjectives such as "benar"
(true), "jelas" (obvious), "ternyata" (clear) will be presented to make a case
that in the underlying strutures, the NP subject slot is occupied by an
empty category, pro.
The paper further suggests that the deposition of a PRO as a subject NP
in the underlying structure for these sentences augurs well with
Chomsky's principle which requires that all sentences must have a subject
NP. Finally, the paper suggets that there may be a need to have a relook
at current standpoint of some present Malay grammarians on the question of
the basic structures of Malay with respect to the type of sentences considered in the paper.
Arabic Loanword Trajectories in Malay
Alan S. Kaye
California State University, Fullerton, USA
This paper examines the forms of the Arabic loanwords in
Malay as reported in Muhammad A. J. Beg's Arabic Loan-
Words in Malay (Kuala Lumpur, 1979). The phonology of
the loanwords themselves establishes the trajectories (often)
of the etymas' antecedents. For example, abiaz 'white'
reflects a Persian-Urdu source, contracting further to abaz
(perhaps via internal Malay pressure), whereas the doublet
abiad reflects a pure Arabic spoken or written source.
Similar alternations are found in akhzar and akhdar 'green'
and ardi and arzi 'earth'. There are two other problems
which are discussed: (1) the doublets reflecting pausal and
non-pausal Arabic forms, such as amanah and amanat
'security', and (2) vowel discrepancies from the Arabic point
of view; eg., ammi 'illiterate' < Arabic ?ummii.
Stress and Prominence in Indonesian Malay
Ove Lorentz
University of Tromso, Tromso, Norway
Stress in Indonesian Malay has been attracting considerable
interest in recent phonological literature, especially within
Optimality Theory (see e.g. Cohn & McCarthy 1994).
Monolingual speakers seem to have no lexical stress, but
stress placement is nevertheless complex.
The basic stress unit is a bisyllabic trochee. One of the
features of Indonesian stress is that it is sensitive to
affixation, so corresponding to the trochee in e.g. Sundanese
['di-cet] "painted" we find [di-'cat] id. Tone seems to be the
main phonetic correlate of main stress, but misalignment of
the word focusing high tone and main stress occurs when
other tones are present, thus indicating that the head foot at
the right edge of the prosodic word functions merely as an
anchoring point for the tone, and that tone is in fact a
separate category from main stress (Lorentz 1995). This
misalignment was interpreted as a stress shift by e.g. Halim
(1981) and Cohn & McCarthy (1994).
Another interesting feature, which is the main topic of the
present paper, is that there are two parameters for weight
distinctions in the language, namely full vs. reduced vowel
and closed vs. open syllable. Weight differences such as
these are fairly common (see e.g. Kenstowicz 1993, 1994),
e.g. in the Germanic languages, but the interest of
Indonesian Malay in this regard is that it allows us to rank
these two prominence parameters with respect to each
other, with closed/open syllable ranking higher than
full/reduced vowel. We will reject the recent proposal of
using stress morae in addition to length morae (Hayes
1995), and will instead use an extended set of Peak
Prominence constraints to capture these distinctions in an
OT framework.
Indonesian stress thus throws light on the use of
morphological information in phonology, on the phonetics of
stress and tone, and on the hierarchy of weight.
References:
Cohn, Abigael C., & John J. McCarthy. 1994. Alignment and
parallelism in Indonesian phonology. Rutgers Optimality
Archive 25. 80pp. Available online from
ftp://ruccs.rutgers.edu/pub/OT/TEXTS/papers.
Halim, Amran. 1981 [1969, 1974]. Intonation in relation to
syntax in Indonesian. Pacific linguistics. Series D; no. 36.
Materials in languages of Indonesia; no. 5. Canberra:
Australian National University.
Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical Stress Theory, Principles and
Case Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kenstowicz, Michael. 1993. Peak prominence stress systems
in Optimality Theory. Proc. of the 1st Int. Conf. on Linguistics
at Chosun University. Kwangju: Foreign Culture Research
Institute.
Kenstowicz, Michael. 1994. Sonority-Driven Stress. Rutgers
Optimality Archive 33. 28pp. Available online from
ftp://ruccs.rutgers.edu/pub/OT/TEXTS/papers.
Lorentz, Ove. 1995. Tonal Prominence and Alignment.
Phonology at Santa Cruz 4, p. 39-56. Linguistics Research
Center, UC Santa Cruz.
Ayam Tim and Babi Chin: Typological Convergence in Baba
Malay
Stephen Matthews & Umberto Ansaldo
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong & Stockholm University,
Stockholm, Sweden
Whether Baba Malay (BM) should be considered a creole or
a dialect of Malay has been controversial. Here we examine
the typology of BM in relation to that of Hokkien and Malay,
asking whether BM has the typological features expected of
a language which has undergone creolization. To answer
this question we will analyse a series of structural features
peculiar to BM as word-order, tense-aspect, possessive and
passive constructions.
The second problem we address is how to explain the
emergence of these structures. We consider two possible
scenarios:
1. The changes could have come about because of
universal factors of creolization. This means that at a
certain stage BM would have gone from a pidgin-like
language comparable to other Malay lingua francae to a fully
developed creole by acquiring native speakers.
2. BM could be an instance of typological convergence:
most of the BM structures singled out as being typical of
creoles are also typologically close to Hokkien, while others
resemble Malay. As often happens in mixed languages
based on typologically close input, idiosyncratic features
were discarded and common features kept. This leads to the
question of the typological distance between BM and
Hokien/Malay: is BM equidistant from both input languages,
and is it to be considered an Austronesian language?
Indonesian Word Classes Revisited
Franz Muller-Gotama
California State University, Fullerton, USA
The proper identification of the word classes in Indonesian,
particularly the question whether Indonesian has a distinct
category "adjective" has been the subject of a long-standing
debate exemplified by Gonda 1944 and Teeuw 1962, among
others, which has not been conclusively settled. Some
scholars argue vigorously that "adjectives" actually form a
subclass of verbs, e.g. Prentice 1987, whereas others take
the existence of adjectives for granted without
argumentation, e.g. Kridalaksana 1990 and the (still?)
planned reference grammar by Verhaar and Purwo.
This paper seeks to demonstrate that the evidence from
Indonesian cannot be accounted for in terms of discrete
word classes. Rather, we show that "adjectives" and "verbs"
form a continuum in this language with no clear dividing
line between them. While clusters of typical morpho-
syntactic properties can be established for both verbs (e.g.,
obligatory yang attribution) and for adjectives (e.g., se-
prefixation), the properties of the individual lexical items do
not add up to create two separate groups but rather form a
network of overlapping and crisscrossing properties. This
non-discrete organization of the lexicon falls out
straightforwardly if parts-of-speech are analyzed as radial
categories with no clear-cut boundaries in the sense of
Cognitive Grammar (Lakoff 1987, Langacker 1987). The
debate whether adjectives "exist" as a separate grammatical
category in Indonesian is, therefore, resolved in terms of a
prototype analysis which extends to the part-of-speech
system as a whole.
A Comparison of Some Indonesian Malay and Brunei Malay
Syntactic Structures: Implications for Universal Grammar
Gloria R. Poedjosoedarmo
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore
Standard Indonesian and Brunei Malay differ in a number of
syntactic features, in particular word order patterns.
Though both varieties of the Malay language have both SV
and VS patterns, the former is at the present point in time
far more common in Indonesian. An actual count reveals
that in fact SV order is also more common in Brunei Malay.
However, VS patterns occur with greater frequency in
Brunei Malay than in Indonesian, giving Indonesians the
impression that Brunei Malay is predominantly VS. In
addition to ordering of basic constituents, there are also
differences in the order of modifiers. Brunei Malay has a
tendency to place adverbial modifiers after the verb while
Indonesian generally places them before the verb.
The theory of Universal Grammar holds that languages tend
to have one of several (in some versions only two)
configurations of syntactic patterns and that languages
which are inconsistent are unstable and tend to change in
the direction of consistency within one of these
configurations. Indonesian and Brunei Malay have
obviously changed in different directions since the earlier
time within the Classical Malay period. Changes in the two
varieties are likely to be partially due to external influences
(Sanskrit, Arabic, Dutch and more recently English for
Indonesian, Arabic, perhaps, and local indigenous languages
of Borneo for Brunei Malay), but regardless of the initial
source of changes an exploration of whether or not change in
these language varieties at present appear to be moving in
the direction of one of the configurations proposed by
universal grammar should have interesting implications.
This paper explores the question.
Ramli Md Salleh
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
The paper discusses prepositions in Malay and assumes that
there are two classes of prepositions; i.e. ordinary
prepositions and "locative and directional adverbs".
Furthermore, this paper makes a claim that the ordinary
prepositions act like transitive verbs, that is they can take
objects. Thus they are transitive prepositions. On the other
hand, the "locative and directional adverbs" can be
considered as intransitive prepositions, and like their verbal
counterparts, may not take objects. Moreover, these
intransitive prepositions as the head of Prepositional Phrase
(PP) may undergo a local movement rule such as Particle
Movement. This paper will thus provide evidence and
justifications for this movement such as preposition
stranding.
Adverbial Quantifiers and Scope in Malay
Rogayah Razak
Kuala Lunmpur, Malaysia
(formerly of the School of
Humanities, the University of Science Malaysia, Penang).
Quantification in Malay is manifested in both forms of determiner
quantification and adverbial quantification. The former includes determiner
quantifiers such as setiap, semua, segala, kebanyakan, beberapa etc. whilst
the latter employs a more wide ranging mechanisms like affixes such as
prefix se- in sebuah 'one', prefix ber- in berlima 'five in a group' etc. or
uses adverbs like sering ' always', kerapkali 'frequently' etc. or modals
like mungkin 'may be' or duplication like kuih-kuih which gives the meaning
of a wide variety of cakes. The discussion attempts to examine these kinds
of adverbial quantifiers in Malay. The issue of the determinance of scope
with regards to adverbial quantifiers and factors affecting scope selection
will also be investigated.
The Case of the Language of The Peranakan Chinese of
Kelantan, Malaysia
Teo Kok Seong
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
The Peranakan Chinese of Kelantan are a group who have
assimilated extensively linguistically and culturally to the
Kelantan rural Malays and Kelantan Thai community. This
paper will explore the form of the language of this group
within the framework of contact linguistics. Besides this, it
will also address the extent and character of Malay and Thai
borrowings. More importantly, it will attempt to address a
theoretical typology issue: the linguistic status of mixed
languages ã the language of these Peranakan Chinese is an
instance of such category.