Argument Structure in Indonesian Passive Voice

Universal Grammar Analyses

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211226.066How to use a DOI?

Keywords

argument structure; passive voice; thematic relation; principles and parameters

Abstract

In linguistic research, Indonesian language is claimed as a language that is marginalized in its study. Also, from universal grammar study, Indonesian, particularly Indonesian passive voice does not seem to have been discussed properly. Therefore, this paper aims at explaining that Indonesian passive voice has argument structures which are tied up by thematic relations so, from the perspective of universal grammar (UG), the number and types of elements categorized as principles and parameters can be determined. Data taken from the Kompas newspaper and the results of the research show that there are only two elements in the formation of Indonesian passive voice. The first and the main element is the predicate argument which consists of passive verbs, and the second one is the subject element with five semantic roles, namely (1) objective subject, (2) patient subject, (3) benefactive subject, (4) receptive subject, and (5) locative subject. Numbers (1) and (2) can be further divided into thirteen and nine thematic relations, respectively. These results indicate that Indonesian passive voices are very abstract, complex, and varied. However, all of them can be mastered by children in a short time without the need to take grammar courses. The only learning effort undertaken by children is by listening and getting stimulation in the form of the language exposed by the people around them. It also proves that there is a universal grammar principle (UG) which is innate to everyone’s nature and that principle then underlies all language structures in this universe. This also validates that in every native speaker there is a sub-component of the lexicon in the form of vocabulary richness capital along with information on how to pronounce, form, and mean. Behind this, it is believed that there is also an embedded competence in the form of sub-component of a computational system, which is in the form of the ability to combine and arrange words in a certain order and manner, so based on native speakers’ intuition they can distinguish grammatical and non-grammatical structure.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kamsinah Kamsinah
AU  - Muhammad Darwis
AU  - Ainun Fatimah
AU  - Muhammad Ali Imran
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/12/27
TI  - Argument Structure in Indonesian Passive Voice
BT  - Proceedings of the International Congress of Indonesian Linguistics Society (KIMLI 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 346
EP  - 350
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211226.066
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211226.066
ID  - Kamsinah2021
ER  -