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Article published In:
Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units
Edited by Tsuyoshi Ono, Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki
[Studies in Language 43:2] 2019
► pp. 402–443

The predicate as a locus of grammar and interaction in colloquial Indonesian

ORCID logo | University of Melbourne

Descriptions of Indonesian usually take the clause as the starting point for analysing grammatical structure and rely on the notion of ellipsis to account for the way speakers actually use language in everyday conversational interaction. This study challenges the status of “clause” by investigating the structures actually used by Indonesian speakers in informal conversation and it demonstrates that the predicate, rather than the clause, plays a central role in the grammar of Indonesian conversation. The preponderance of predicates in the data that do not have explicit arguments suggests that this format is best viewed as the default. When a predicate is produced without overt arguments, reconstructing what arguments may have been elided is often ambiguous or indeterminate and seems to be irrelevant to speakers. An examination of turn-taking, overlap and incrementing in conversation also shows that predicates, rather than full clauses, are the grammatical format participants regularly orient to.

Keywords: Interactional Linguistics, linguistic units, Indonesian, conversation, predicate, clause
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Predicate configurations in conversational Indonesian
    • 2.1Verbal predicates
    • 2.2Non-verbal predicates
    • 2.3When there are no explicit arguments
  • 3.Frequency and distribution of predicate configurations in conversation
  • 4.Predicates in interaction
    • 4.1Turn constructions and predicates
    • 4.2Participant orientation and predicates
      • 4.2.1Next turn onset
      • 4.2.2Joint utterance completion
      • 4.2.3Turn continuations
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Glosses
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.17062.ewi
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