Rajeg, Gede Primahadi Wijaya; Rajeg, I Made; Arka, I Wayan (2020): Contrasting the semantics of Indonesian -kan & -i verb pairs: A usage-based, constructional approach. figshare. Presentation. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11758218
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In this talk, we demonstrate the application of one quantitative method in usage-based, Construction Grammar (Goldberg, 2006; Croft, 2001), namely Collostructional Analysis(CollAna) (see Stefanowitsch, 2013, for recent overview).
We expand CollAna to a preliminary investigation of a theoretical issue in Indonesian linguistics concerning semantic (dis)similarity between morphological construction pair (of the same root) suffixed with -kan and -i (i.e. mengenai and mengenakan based on the root kena '(get) hit (by); come into contact with'). Mengenai and mengenakan are used to illustrate the claim of blurry semantic distinction between -kan and -i in common usage; they are both translated as 'subject to' in English by Sneddon et al. (2010, p. 101).
Contrary to Sneddon et al.'s claim, we provide fresh empirical evidence that:
meanings are constructed across different levels of constructions (i.e. morphological [e.g., different suffixation] and syntactic [e.g., collocational patterns and syntactic function])
(alternative) constructions show complex interaction with grammaticalisation process: mengenai is predominantly used as a grammaticalised unit indicating oblique marker like preposition meaning 'concern/in relation to', meanwhile mengenakan expresses lexical meaning of 'to wear (clothing or accessories)' as it predominantly collocates with clothing and accessories-related nouns. Furthermore, evidence for the grammaticalisation of mengenai 'concerning' comes from the absence of paradigmatic opposition for the grammaticalised mengenai in passive di- (i.e. dikenai, which in turn expresses lexical meaning of the syntactic subject is subjected to certain regulations (e.g., tax, law, fee))
References
Croft, W. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, A. E. (2006). Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford University Press.
Sneddon, J. N., Adelaar, A., Djenar, D. N., & Ewing, M. C. (2010). Indonesian reference grammar (2nd ed.). Allen & Unwin.
Stefanowitsch, A. (2013). Collostructional analysis. In T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 290–306). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396683.013.0016