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Topic Clauses in Malay1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
Clauses of the kind described in this article as topic clauses occur commonly in both spoken and written Malay. However, such clauses have not so far been fully accounted for in formal analyses of Malay syntax, nor, except in Miss M. B. Lewis's recent book, have they been described by the use of Topic as an additional element in clause structure. The purpose of this article is to give a much fuller description of such clauses, and to suggest that analyses of them using Topic as an additional clause-element have advantages over the alternative analyses in terms of Subject, Predicate, and Complement alone.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , October 1970 , pp. 560 - 572
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1970
References
2 Lewis, M. B., Sentence analysis in modern Malay, Cambridge, 1969Google Scholar. See footnotes 90, 98, 126, 151, 161, and 243, and p. 184.
3 This article covers declarative and interrogative clauses, both passive and non-passive, on the assumption that this will suffice to demonstrate the advantages of using Topic as an additional clause-element, and will enable others to extend a similar analysis, where appropriate, to other kinds of clause. For definitions of ‘passive’ and ‘non-passive’ see Payne, E. M. F., Basic syntactic structures in standard Malay, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1964 (pp. 26, n., and 94)Google Scholar.
As Payne points out (p. 88), an interrogative clause is distinguished from a declarative clause by the presence of an interrogative particle or by a rising intonation tune, so that the two sorts of clause may, with these modifications, be described in the same terms.
4 This article follows the definitions of word classes, and subclasses of verbs, proposed by Payne.
5 See Payne (p. 64).
6 As defined by Payne (p. 63), the syntactic equivalƏnts of a noun are: noun phrase, noun group, verb form operating as head of nominal phrase, Yang piece, pronoun, deictic, downgraded (included) clause.
7 The element C is restricted to sěmua-nya, sa-těngah-nya, kěbanyakan-nya, and perhaps some other similar expressions.
8 Di- and těr forms act as Predicate in passive clauses.
9 My informant said this structure was on the verge of impossibility.
10 An adjunct is necessary and must immediately follow Subject.
11 Orang-nya. There is no problem about describing this example and the two which follow as topic clauses, but it is less easy with clauses like the following:
(a) Saya pĕmalu orang-nya ‘I am a shy person’
(b) Engkau malas orang-nya ‘You are a lazy person’.
The difficulty about treating (a) and (6) as topic clauses is that -nya does not normally refer ot 1st or 2nd person pronouns. However, none of the alternative analyses fits any better. Orang-nya cannot be regarded as a parenthetic clause adjunct, such as mithal-nya (see Payne, 109), since the potential pause is at (X) not (Y):
Saya ini (X) malas (Y) orang-nya ‘I'm a lazy person’.
Nor, secondly, can clauses (a) and (b) be treated as grammatically parallel with cases like the following, in which -nya has a determinative function:
Kami měnyewa rumah di-bandar. Bumah-nya kěchil… ‘We rented a house in the town. The house was small…’.
Perhaps, therefore, examples (a) and (b) should be construed as topic clauses, irregular to the extent that 1st and 2nd person pronouns are operating as T.
12 In poetry, adjectives may also act as S in clause structure:
Walau chantek měmbĕri mudarat
Dia mĕati di-puji, di-hzgumi
‘Although (what is) pretty brings harm
It is always praised and admired’
(from Chantek, by il-Sarkam, Awam, in Ali Haji Ahmad (comp.), Puisi baharu Mĕlayu, 1942–1960, second ed., Kuala Lumpur, 1966)Google Scholar.
13 Teeuw, A., ‘Some problems in the study of word-classes in Bahasa Indonesia’. Lingua, xi, 1962, 419Google Scholar.
14 Omar, Asmah Haji, ‘Word classes in Malay’, Anthropological Linguistics, x, 5, 1968, 12–22Google Scholar.