Searching for structure : the problem of complementation in colloquial Indonesian conversation / Robert Englebretson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Englebretson, Robert.

Series:

Studies in discourse and grammar ; v. 13.

Studies in discourse and grammar, 0928-8929 ; v. 13

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indonesian language--Discourse analysis.

Indonesian language.

Indonesian language--Complement.

Indonesian language--Semantics.

Indonesian language--Verb.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 216 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, PA : John Benjamins Pub., 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book argues against the existence of complementation in colloquial Indonesian, and discusses the ramifications of these findings for a discourse-functional understanding of grammatical categories and linguistic structure. Based on a close analysis of a corpus of spontaneous conversational Indonesian data, the author examines four construction types which express what is often encoded by complements in other languages: juxtaposed clauses, material introduced by the discourse marker bahwa, serial verbs, and epistemic expressions with the suffix -nya. These four construction types offer no evidence to support complementation as a viable grammatical category in colloquial spoken Indonesian. Rather, they are best understood as emergent, discourse-level phenomena, arising from the interactive and communicative goals of language users. The lack of evidence for complementation in colloquial Indonesian reaffirms the need to understand linguistic structure as language-particular and diverse, and emphasizes the centrality of studying linguistic categories based on their actual occurrence in natural discourse.

Contents:

Cover Editorial page Title page LCC page Table of contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Preliminaries Chapter 2. Juxtaposed clauses Chapter 3. Complementizers in context: An analysis of bahwa Chapter 4. Verbs in series Chapter 5. Epistemic -nya constructions Chapter 6. Conclusion References Appendices Name index Subject index The series STUDIES IN DISCOURSE AND GRAMMAR

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-16137-7

9786612161377

90-272-9672-3

OCLC:

52967314