A morphosyntactic and morphosemantic analysis of the Malay fear lexeme
For Malay, when no contextual clues are given, a lexical form can be confusing because sometimes it can have more than one meaning. We postulated that most confusing meanings can be disambiguated through observing their morphosyntactic and morphosemantic structures. We used corpus data and analyzed the possible features of takut ‘fear’ that can help decide which form of takut in Malay to choose. If a default lexical verb meaning is intended (i.e., the original meaning), the feature [Experiencer-(Stimulus)] is needed and the takut
(v) form is used. If a causative meaning is intended, the men-(t)akut-kan form is used. If a passive meaning is intended, there are some possibilities, as the choice could depend on the syntax of the passive form, such as whether the [Experiencer] is a first- or second-person pronoun (e.g., benda itu saya takut-i ‘the thing feared by me’) or other pronouns (e.g., benda itu paling di-takut-i oleh-nya ‘that thing feared most by him/her’) or whether an adversative meaning is intended ([ke- -an] form). We propose that both the morphosyntactic and morphosemantic structures of takut need to be considered to better understand the use of the different meanings of Malay derived and inflected forms.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Malay fear
- 3.Methodology
- 4.Results
- 4.1
Takut bare form: The lexical verb meaning and the [Experiencer-(Stimulus)] meaning
- 4.2
Men-(t)akut-kan: The causative meaning and the [Causer-(Causee)] meaning
- 4.3[Ke-takut-an], [di-takut-i], [takut-i], and [di-takut-kan]: Passive forms and homonyms?
- 4.4
Pen-(t)akut: The agentive Pen-
- 5.Discussion and conclusion
- 5.1First research question: In what ways are the forms of Malay shown in the lexeme takut?
- 5.2Second research question: What are the semantic relations of the morphologically related forms of takut?
- 5.3Third research question: How are similar functions (e.g., passive) represented by different grammatical morphemes for takut?
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
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