620 ARCHIV ORIENTALNI 29, 1961 SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN INDONESIAN LANGUAGE V. Krupa and G. Altmann, Bratislava The authors try to analyse the Indonesian personal’ pronouns into distinctive semantic components which constitute binary oppositions, so that the sememe of each pronoun is defined as a complex of these components. The use of pronouns (i.e. the allosemes) is examined separately. The system described in this way differs from the traditional one. This article has for subject the semantic analysis of the system of personal pronouns in Bahasa Indonesia in its today’s literary form. In Indonesian the personal pronouns can be decomposed into di- stinctive semantic components which constitute binary oppositions. By means of binary analysis we only state the reciprocal relation between the members of the system; however, the data obtained in this way by themselves are not sufficient to determine exactly the use of each member of the system. This requires a separate discussion made in item 4, Analysis of this kind has proved to be useful as far as some other Indonesian languages are concerned. Our analysis of Indonesian personal pronouns includes three stages: (1) determination of personal pronouns; (2) decomposition into distinctive semantic components; (3) synthesis of the system. 1. Traditional grammars reduce the description of Indonesian personal pronouns to the enumeration of words they are classing with personal pronouns. The categories they mention are: person, number and inclu- sivity. The system has the following form: Sing. Plur. 1. aku kami (excl.), kita (incl.) 2. engkau, kamu kamu 3. dial mereka To these pronouns appellatives are also added in the capacity of equivalent pronouns (e. g. saja, beliau, tuan, saudara and others) which are, however, only equivalents of courtesy to some personal pronouns (kita and kami have no equivalents of courtesy) and with respect to the system are not significant; apart from the component of courtesy they do not include any special distinctive components and for the most part they have their own specific meaning. 1 We prefer to use dia instead of ia for its wider distribution.——O wee V. KRUPA—G. ALTMANN: Personal Pronouns in Indonesian Language 621 There are appellatives with strictly defined pronominal function (e. g. Saja, beliau) and there are others which in a discourse are able to fulfil the function of diverse persons (e. g. ibu, tuan). All of them are not pro- nominalized at the same degree. The pronominalization consists in the gradual fixing of the pronominal function, in losing the specific mea- ning and in acquiring deictic meaning which is characteristic for pro- nouns. The pronominalization of the meaning takes place simultaneously with changes of formal character manifesting themselves in faculties of combination. All pronominal appellatives i. e. those lexemes which have their own specific meaning or have besides of the component of courtesy no other component that does not occur in some real pronoun, have been excluded from the analysis. There have also been excluded all short forms of which only -nja has a special semantic component missed even by dia and mere- ka (bivalent). Short pronouns constitute a particular system. 2. The traditional description of personal pronouns in Indonesian language is not sufficient as the oppositions on which the system is based are not entirely reflected by it. This defect is evident with regard to kamu which is said to be both singular and plural and to kita which is said to express the first person of plural incl., though it may just as well repre- sent the second person of plural incl. The question is to state the existing oppositions in terms of distinctive semantic components, to describe the system as exactly as possible and to chart the result. The distinctive semantic components are stated below: a) Present — not present according to the fact whether the pronoun expresses the person who must take part in the conversation or the person who cannot take part in it. We mark these components with P and P respectively. b) Limited — not limited according to the fact whether the pronoun expresses one person or an unlimited number of persons. We mark the components with L and L respectively. c) Hearer — not hearer according to the fact whether the pronoun expresses the person who listens or does not. This opposition only refers to pronouns having the component P. We use the marks H and H for these components respectively. d) Bivalent — not bivalent according to the fact whether the pronoun shares the opposition of limitation. This opposition is shared only by pronouns having the component H. Not bivalent can be either limited or not limited, bivalent is neither limited nor not limited. We mark the com- ponents with B and B respectively. First we decompose the pronouns into distinctive semantic compo- nents. Referring to each pronoun, we express the presence of distinctive semantic components P, H, B, L with the mark “plus” and the presence622 V. KRUPA—G. ALTMANN of opposite distinctive semantic components P, H, B, L with the mark “minus”. Thus we obtain the following figure: aku | kami lengkaut | kita | kamu dia | mereka | P + + + + [+] = | = H “3 _ + + + | Boat eal emac ie L + = + — + — | We wish to point out that only distinctive, not redundant semantic components have been mentioned above. The semantic components which are significant for the use of pronouns will be analysed in item 4. 3. The entire class of personal pronouns marked with the letter C can be divided into a subclass with members which all contain P and into a subclass with members that contain P; in the consequence C = P + P. In a similar way the subclass with P has members with H and H and the subclass with H is composed of members with B and B. Subclasses of pronouns which involve the components P, H, B are divided into members with L and L. The hierarchy of oppositions can be charted in the following way: P P | L Dios H H | L L | Fas. | + | . mereka | dia kami aku kita | engkau | kamu Thus each pronoun has been characterised by symbols which indicate its distinctive semantic components. According to the above mentioned order, the single pronouns have the following components: mereka — PL, dia — PL, kami — PLH, aku — PLH, kita — PLHB, engkau — PLHB, kamu — PHB. We range them into a symmetric system as follows: