query: associative plurals via noun-verb disagreement

Waruno Mahdi mahdi at FHI-BERLIN.MPG.DE
Sat Nov 15 14:22:11 UTC 2008


Hi David,
I think the situation in colloquial Indonesian might formally meet
the definition of associative plural.
In standard Indonesian, as you of course know, the (non-personal) noun
does not have a singular. The non-plural number is indefinite, e.g.

_satu rumah_ 'one house'
_dua rumah_ 'two houses'
_rumah-rumah_ 'houses [various, many, all kinds of]'

The personal pronouns, on the other hand, are either plural (_kita_ 'we
[incl.]'. etc.) or singular (_saya_ 'I, me'). Only in the case of the
third person singular (_dia_/_-nya_) is the "singularity" not so strict.
But in the standard language, this number-indefiniteness is only manifested
in the oblique case form (_-nya_ 'his/him, her, it').
In the colloquial (informal, spoken) language, however, this seems to
a certain degree also to involve the nomintive/absolutive (_dia_ 'he/(she').
Hence:

(1a) _dia ketawa_
      3S INDIC-laugh
     '[s]he laugh[s,ed]'

(2a) _dia pada ketawa_
      3S PLURAL INDIC-laugh
      'they [all] laugh[-ed]'

Here _pada_ is plural modifier of the verb (not plural marker of nouns
or pronouns).
As with the (non-personal) nouns, the indicative form of the verb in
Indonesian has indefinite number, and the above examples can also be
reformulated with the plural personal pronoun; here _E_ = <e-acute>:

(1b) _merEka ketawa_
       3PL INDIC-laugh
      'they laugh[-ed]'

(2b) _merEka pada ketawa_
       3PL PLURAL INDIC-laugh
      'they [all] laugh[-ed]'

But I repeat, example (2a) is only correct for colloquial Indonesian,
not (so far as I know) for standard Indonesian.
To make sure that I wasn't inventing things (about colloq. Ind.),
I googled around a bit, and fished out the following examples from the
Internet:

_dari dulu juga kita udah beda, dia pada makan keju kita cuma makan
  singkong._
'we were already different since earlier, they ate cheese, we only
  ate cassava'

_ternyata dia pada pergi dengan teman yang lain ke tempatnya Tina_
'it turned out that they had all gone with other friends to Tina's
  place'

_Saya yakin kalau tidak tinggi pasti dia pada lari semua kalau lihat
  gaji-nya yg kecil_
'I'm sure if it weren't so high, they would all run away when they
  see the low salary'

But unlike your examples from Roon, proper names in Indonesian are
singular (also in colloquial), unless used as non-personal nouns
(e.g. in the sense of 'all the Ali-s please stand up' when there are
more than one person named Ali in the room).

That's all I have.

Aloha,
Waruno

_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang



More information about the An-lang mailing list