The Locative Constructions in Frog Story Narratives: A Comparative Study between Surinamese Javanese and Java Javanese
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2017-08-30
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en
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This Master’s thesis reports on a comparative study between the Heritage speakers of Javanese in Suriname and Homeland speakers of Javanese in Java Island, Indonesia, in regard to the use of locative constructions. Where the results show significant differences between the two varieties, an in-depth analysis will be carried out to examine whether they can be explained on the account of language contact.
At the end of the nineteenth century, around 33,000 Javanese people were brought to Suriname, South America, as contract workers under the Dutch colonial rule. These immigrants have tried to maintain the use of their Homeland language, i.e. Java Javanese, in their daily life. However, the language soon underwent changes as they gradually adapted to the grammar of the dominant languages with which they were in contact, namely Dutch and Sranantongo, into the grammar of their Homeland language. As a result, a new variety of Javanese emerged, i.e. Surinamese Javanese. It is interesting, therefore, to examine the possibility of divergence between the two varieties, as well as convergence between the Heritage variety and the contact languages.
The result of the quantitative analysis of the data shows that the two varieties have both similarities and differences in regard to the use of locative constructions. The similarity is manifested in the way two varieties have similar preferences toward some particular constructions in expressing movement and position description. They are different in that the Surinamese Javanese (i) use constructions with multiple motion-verbs more frequently; (ii) use more simple constructions for both movement and position description; (iii) overgeneralize the use of general locative marking; and (iv) use different variants of path-expressing preposition in expressing source movement-type locative constructions.
It is assumed that those differences are the outcomes of both external processes, i.e. cross- linguistic influence from the contact languages, and internal processes, i.e. the universal principle of language development in contact settings favoring a simplification. Phenomenon (i) may be better linked to the former in that the interference results in the change in frequency, while (ii) is likely to result from the combination between the two processes. Phenomenon (iii) results from the contact in that the influence leads to grammatical reanalysis. As for (iv), it may be rooted in the different type of input acquired by the Heritage speakers. From these findings, it is evident that language contact has become the source of divergence between the two varieties, and at the same time convergence between Surinamese Javanese and the contact languages.
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Faculteit der Letteren