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- Title
Constituent order and information structure in Indonesian discourse.
- Authors
Djenar, Dwi Noverini
- Abstract
This study draws on theories of information structure to examine the findings from Cumming's (1991) study showing changing preferences in constituent order in Indonesian. Cumming found that predicate-initial clauses, an important grammatical resource for encoding events in Classical Malay, are diminishing in Indonesian, and agentive clauses are now preferred. Based on data from fictional discourse and television reports, three clause structures are examined: [meN -V], [di-V-nya] and [ia V]. I show that the use of [meN -V] to denote successive events and to mark the climactic portion of a story episode illustrate most dramatically the preference for agentive clauses in Indonesian. I also argue that [di-V-nya] remains an important resource for encoding events but its pragmatic function seems to have weakened. This clause type is now mainly used to mark a new focus, drawing the addressee's attention to a particular event or series of events. Meanwhile, objective voice [ia V] is also used to encode events; however, unlike [di-V-nya] which is structurally different from [meN - V], the use of [ia V] alongside agentive clause structure [ia meN -V] creates an impression of structural symmetry and can serve two goals simultaneously: marking event and signalling a new focus. It could be that, as the pragmatic force of [di-V-nya] is weakening, [ia V] is increasingly preferred for marking focal events.
- Subjects
INDONESIAN language; WORD order (Grammar); DISCOURSE analysis; CLAUSES (Grammar); LINGUISTIC analysis
- Publication
Studies in Diversity Linguistics, 2018, Issue 21, p177
- ISSN
2363-5568
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5281/zenodo.1402545