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Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 23:2 (2022) ► pp.147–190

Emotion terms in Malay

Patterns in [meN-], [meN‑ -i], [meN‑ -kan], and [‑kan]-only forms

| National Chengchi University

This study examined 25 emotion terms in Malaysian Malay and used corpus data to investigate whether these emotion terms appeared with the [meN-], [meN‑ -i], [meN‑ -kan], and [‑kan]-only forms. The emotion terms were patterned in four different ways. Category One included local emotion verbs that conformed to the pattern [Affector-Affectee]. In this category, the verbs were dominated by the [meN‑ -i] form, with a small number including the suffix [‑kan]-only. A verb in the [meN‑ -kan] form was either a Category Two [Causer meN‑ -kan Causee] pattern or a Category Four [Experiencer meN‑ -kan Event] pattern, among which Category Two had a higher number of instances. Category Three included two possible patterns – [Experiencer meN‑ -i Stimulus] and [Experiencer meN‑ (Stimulus absent)]. We found that the emotion terms with the [meN-]-only form were largely “narrating” the emotions of the speaker or situation, which provided the background, while the emotion terms with the [‑kan]-only form were largely “proposing” the emotion of the speaker or the subject being referred to (cf. Hopper 1983; Bambang Kaswanti Purwo 1988). We were able to discern not only emotion terms in Malay but also their different uses in [meN-], [meN‑ -i], [meN‑ -kan], and [‑kan]-only forms.

Keywords: emotion terms, semantic roles, Malay, corpus, [meN-] [meN‑ -i] [meN‑ -kan] [‑kan]
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.[MeN-], [meN‑ -i], [meN‑ -kan], and [‑kan]-only
    • 2.1[MeN-]
    • 2.2[-i] and [-kan]
    • 2.3Semantic roles
  • 3.Methodology and results
  • 4.Pattern analysis
    • 4.1Category One: [Affector-Affectee]
    • 4.2Category Two: [Causer-Causee]
    • 4.3Category Three: [Experiencer-Stimulus]
    • 4.4Category Four: [Experiencer-Event]
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion and future work
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 29 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00102.chu
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