Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay

Its meaning conceptualization

[馬來語 Lagi 之語意概念]

Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

National Chengchi University [國立政治大學]

Lagi, a less studied Malay adverb, has meanings such as ‘in addition’, ‘again’,
‘more’, and ‘yet/still’. We aimed to see how these meanings could be related
in a single word and to find the conceptualization and grammatical paths
involved. We also intended to find out whether this word carries any under-
lying meanings not specified in dictionaries. In the corpus, although many
examples have lagi in the sentence-final position, some unconventional sen-
tence-initial uses were also found in news headlines. We found that lagi
serves a special function in news headlines, emphasizing the repeatedness of
events that were often negative or undesirable. The seemingly unrelated
meanings of lagi can be categorized based on three meaning concepts –
addition/more meaning, less-more continuum, and temporal lagi (‘yet/
still’, ‘again’). In addition to these concepts, we also found several possible
grammaticalization paths that contribute to the different uses of lagi.

Keywords: Lagi, Standard Malaysian Malay, adverb, corpus

關鍵詞：lagi、馬來語、副詞、語料庫

1. Introduction

Lagi is an adverb that has been given little attention in Malay. Here, Malay refers
to Standard Malaysian Malay. Only few studies that mentioned lagi were found.
Unlike Malay verbs that have received much attention from many researchers
(e.g., Hopper 1983, Cumming 1991, Benjamin 1993, Soh & Nomoto 2011, Soh 2013,
Sew 2016, and many others), adverbs do not have their own section in gram-
mar books and are often discussed under the grammatical category kata keteran-
gan. In an earlier version of the reference grammar book, Nik Safiah Karim et al.
(1996: xiv) did not relate kata adverba ‘adverbials’ to kata keterangan, although in
https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.00004.chu
Concentric 45:1 (2019), pp. 82–111. issn 1810-7478 | e‑issn 2589-5230
© Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 83

a later version of Nik Safiah Karim et al. (2008) and in many other references,
kata adverba became more common and accepted as part of kata keterangan (e.g.,
Sulaiman Masri, Mashudi Bahari, & Juliliyana Mohd Junid 2007, Rohaizah Ab.
Karim 2014).1 Now, the website of Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka defines adverba
as kata keterangan: “kata yg menjawab pertanyaan bagaimana, bila, di mana dan
menerangkan kata kerja, adjektif dll (spt dgn baik, dgn cepat, dahulu, sering); kata
keterangan” [words that are used to answer questions such as ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’,
and to modify verbs, adjectives, etc. (such as ‘well’, ‘quickly’, ‘before’, ‘often’)].2
Despite the increasing recognition of kata adverba, lagi is still barely mentioned.
In Nik Safiah Karim et al.’s (1996) book, examples of it were scattered across sev-
eral unrelated sections, often appearing in examples explaining other grammatical
functions. Lagi in (1a–b) below is listed as kata keterangan in the book to explain
the change of first person pronouns in passive sentences. No further details could
be obtained about its uses.3
(1) a. Makan-an itu belum aku rasa-i lagi.
eat-an that neg (yet) 1sg taste-i lagi
‘That food has not been tasted (by me) yet.’
b. Makan-an itu belum ku-rasa-i lagi.
eat-an that neg (yet) 1sg-taste-i lagi
‘I haven’t tasted that food yet.’4
(Examples taken from Nik Safiah Karim et al. 1996: 470; translation and
glosses added by the current author)

The same scant information was found when we searched for past literature on
lagi. In Goddard’s (2001, 2002) semantic primes in Bahasa Melayu, more (lagi) is
listed as an “intensifier and augmentor” together with very (sangat). This shows
that lagi is a basic concept, but it is unknown why it is scarcely studied. Rohaizah
Ab. Karim (2014) ran a corpus-based study on adverbials but did not list lagi
as one of the adverbs to be observed. Fazal Mohamed Mohamed Sultan et al.
(2010) discussed the “ungrammatical” transitive verb [memper + kan] followed
by lagi but believed that this use was marked ungrammatical only as a “prescrip-

1. Malay names were cited in full names in both in-text citations and in the references. Malay
names follow the “patronymic naming system of given name + bin/binti + father’s name”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic).
2. Available at http://prpm.dbp.gov.my/cari1?keyword=adverba. Accessed October 18, 2017;
translation added. All translations in this paper were proofread and corrected by two Malay
native speakers.
3. Most of the identifiable morphemes were labeled separately in the glosses. Some lexicalized
morphemes (e.g., se- in selama ‘as long as’, setelah ‘after’, etc.) were not labeled separately.
4. The list of abbreviations is available at the end of this article.
84 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

tive grammar” (i.e., rules in grammar books). There were authentic examples
from “descriptive grammar” that showed the frequent use of [memper + kan lagi].
The discussion, however, focused on whether one should accept learners’ use of
[memper + kan lagi] since there are many instances found outside textbooks. Yet
such a discussion is not within the scope of this paper, our goal being to present
the uses of lagi and explain its conceptualization and discourse functions. Zaha-
rani Ahmad & Nor Hashimah Jalaluddin (2012) discussed lagi as an adjunct and
its transformation in formal syntax. Franstišek Kratochvíl, Nur Izdihar Ismail, &
Diyana Hamzah (2018: 71), on the other hand, dedicated a short paragraph dis-
cussing the function of lagi as a ‘particle’ in the frog story – “lagi emphasizes the
existence of another referent which should be included in the focus.”5
In searching for uses of lagi, we found various seemingly unrelated meanings.
We postulated that these meanings could be conceptualized in a systematic way.
We thus ran a corpus-based analysis of lagi. In doing so, we also hypothesized that
lagi carries a certain meaning that is not apparent at the word level. Our research
questions are as follows:
(2) a. How can the seemingly unrelated meanings of lagi be conceptualized sys-
tematically?
b. What underlying meanings are carried by lagi?

In what follows, we will explain some uses of lagi and relevant background
information.

2. Lagi

Like adverbials in many languages, adverbials in Malay can be single-word

adverbs or multiword adverbials. The single-word adverb lagi can be a bare word
or it can have affixes, although the affixes often change the meanings and uses of
lagi. For example, selagi means ‘as long as’ and ‘whilst’, and lagikan means ‘even’,
etc.6 As a multiword adverb, lagi can be combined with other words to become
different adverbs, namely, apa lagi ‘what’s more’, lagi pula ‘in addition’, lagi pun
‘furthermore’, etc. (translations vary according to the sentences). From its uses

5. When a co-authored work has both Malay and non-Malay names, for consistency of citation
(see Footnote 1 for the convention of Malay author citation), all of the authors will be given their
full names in the in-text citations and in the references. Thus, Franstišek Kratochvíl is cited in
full name.
6. The Kamus Dewan online provides bahkan ‘even’ and sedangkan ‘whereas’ as the translation
of lagikan:
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 85

and various possible combinations, we understand why lagi is not included in any
particular section of grammar books – because it varies greatly in meanings and
is used mostly as a connective when it appears in multiword forms. This diversity
of meanings for lagi can create difficulties not only for machine translation but
also for human users. Therefore, to understand which meaning of lagi is intended,
one must rely completely on its context. In Traugott & Dasher’s (2002: 152) model,
the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC) (cf. Traugott 1999),
they dedicate a chapter to the discussion of “adverbials with discourse marker
function.” In that chapter, they claim that adverbials aim “to signal an aspect of
the speaker’s rhetorical stance toward what he or she is saying, or toward the
addressee’s role in the discourse situation.” (Traugott & Dasher 2002: 152). They
also state that adverbials “mark the speaker’s view of the sequential relationship
between units of discourse, that is, they serve as connectives between utterances.
They are widely known as ‘discourse markers’ (Fraser 1988) or ‘discourse connec-
tives’ (Blakemore 1987).” (Traugott & Dasher 2002: 152).
Lagi, also as a polysemous word,7 has all the features mentioned above – it sig-
nals the rhetorical stance of the speaker and also marks the speaker’s view (e.g.,
dia lagi cantik ‘s/he is more beautiful’). One example is shown in (3) below:

(i) Serangga yg kecil itu lagi-kan dpt mem-bina bukit dgn meng-angkut pasir
insects rel small that lagi-kan get mem-build mountain with meng-carry sand
se-butir demi se-butir.
se-class by se-class
‘Small insects can even build a mountain by carrying sand grain by grain.’
http://prpm.dbp.gov.my/Cari1?keyword=lagikan (translation and glosses added by
the current author)
However, the only example of lagikan in our corpus could be translated as ‘moreover’, ‘even’, or
‘in fact’. We kept one translation (‘even’) only for this use:
(ii) Mungkin bagi-nya, hukum-an seperti itu di-sifat-kan ‘enteng’. Lagi-kan
maybe for-adv.suffix punish-an like that pass-behavior-kan light lagi-kan
sebelum ini hampir 10 tahun beliau keluar masuk penjara. Jadi, apa-lah sangat
before this near 10 year 3sg exit enter jail so what-lah most
sekadar penjara dan se-kali sebat-an.
simply jail and se-time stroke-an
‘Perhaps for him a punishment of that kind is nothing/not a big thing. Moreover he was
/He was even/ In fact he was imprisoned for 10 years before. So what effect could a
mere jail sentence and a one-time stroke have on him?’
7. Traugott & Dasher’s (2002) model is based on semantic change. Therefore, the fact that a
word is polysemous has a strong connection with its possibility of undergoing semantic change.
We will discuss this in a later section.
86 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

(3) Setelah di-fikir semula, peluang ke-emas-an seperti ini

after pass-think again opportunity ke-gold-an like this
bukan-nya selalu datang. Sebagai anak seni, bila lagi saya dapat
neg-adv.suffix always come as child art when lagi 1sg get
mem-pamer-kan kreativiti untuk meng-arah-kan karya se-hebat ini?
mem-showcase-kan creativity for meng-direct-kan art.work se-great this
‘After contemplating once again, a golden opportunity like this is not always
coming. As a child of the arts, when else can I get to showcase [my] creativity
to direct a work as great as this one?’

Although lagi means ‘again’ or ‘else’ in (3), it expresses the speaker’s view on the
issue that would not be demonstrated if lagi was removed. Without lagi, bila
‘when’ would simply form a question that asks, “When can I showcase [my] cre-
ativity?” (Bila saya dapat mempamerkan kreativiti?).
Lagi also serves as a connective between utterances when lagi means apa lagi
‘what’s more’, lagi pula ‘again’, etc. Although there were mentions of lagi in different
pieces of work, no systematic discussion has been carried out. This paper will dis-
cuss lagi’s semantic meanings as well as its conceptualization in Standard Malay.
As stated, there have been some mentions of lagi in the past, although many
only discussed lagi as part of something else. Koh (1990: 283) did not discuss
lagi in particular, but several examples were found such as lagipun ‘furthermore’,
which was listed as part of the discussion of sentence coordinators. According to
Koh (1990: 286), lagipun marks the semantic function of ‘addition’, following the
semantic classification adapted from Longacre (1985): “In ‘addition’[,] one state of
affairs is presented as an addition to another. This relationship may be marked by
lagipun ‘furthermore’” in the corpora used by the author. Koh’s example of collo-
quial Malay is in (4a) below (no translation was given in Koh’s work; translation
is added in this paper), while (4b) was taken from our own corpus, in which lagi
and pun are separated:
(4) a. Ter-peranjat jugak sebab se-tau aku dia kat Politeknik. Lagipun
ter-shock also because se-know 1sg 3sg at Politeknik lagipun
sekarang bukan ‘time’ cuti.
now neg time holiday
‘I was shocked because as far as I knew he was at Politeknik. Furthermore,
now is not a vacation.’
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 87

b. Walaupun negara tidak ada pe-perang-an dan tentera di-kata-kan

although country neg exist pe-war-an and army pass-say-kan
banyak masa rehat daripada masa be-kerja, namun tugas-an anggota
many time rest from time be-work though duty-an member
tentera tetap ber-sifat memper-taruh-kan darah dan nyawa. Lagi
army still ber-behavior memper-put-kan blood and life lagi
pun masa aman-lah tentera patut di-beri peluang me-nikmat-i segala
pun time peace-lah army should pass-give chance me-enjoy-i all
ke-selesa-an kerana sekira-nya ber-laku perang baru gaji
ke-comfort-an because if-adv.suffix ber-happen war new wage
di-naik-kan se-ribu kali ganda se-kali pun, ia tidak mem-beri
pass-raise-kan se-thousand time time se-time pun 3sg neg mem-give
faedah kerana wang itu sudah tidak ber-nilai lagi.
interest because money that already neg ber-value lagi
‘Although our country is not at war and the army has ample time to rest
rather than work, the army’s work still features sacrifices of blood and life.
Furthermore, during a period of peacefulness, the army is given a chance
to enjoy a time of blissfulness; however, if there is a war, even though their
wages are raised a thousand times, it does not benefit them because the
money will have no value [anymore] in wartime.’

Pun, according to Cumming (1991: 99), is a topic-marker that marks a “resumptive

topic,” a topic that has occurred previously but is reintroduced.8 Much discussion
of this can be found but it will not be presented here. Lagi pun means ‘there again’
or ‘furthermore’ to resume a topic previously mentioned.
In another reference book by King (1986: 6; glosses added), lagi appears in the
section on comparisons, as shown in (5a–c) below:
(5) a. Buku itu lagi kecil.
book that lagi small
‘That book is smaller.’
b. Kereta ini lagi besar (original: keréta)
car this lagi big
‘This car is bigger.’
c. Buah durian lagi sedap.
fruit durian lagi delicious
‘Durians are tastier.’ (original: ‘more tasty’)

8. Although this is a good topic to explore, it is not the aim of this paper to testify whether pre-
vious topics existed before lagipun. An additional corpus-based research on pun may provide
better insights into this proposition. We thank the reviewer for bringing this up.
88 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

King’s (1986: 8) explanation is given below:

Then, instead of saying, “This one is larger than the others”, we simply say, “This
one is larger”. The first sentence in Malay would be…yang ini lebih besar daripada
yang lain, but the second would be…yang in lagi besar. That is to say that when
the comparison stops short after the adjective and does not continue with a than
or daripada, the lebih must be changed to lagi in Malay.

Although this rule seems to be written for learners, it illustrates how little people
know about lagi; for example, it can be used to replace lebih…daripada
‘more…than’ when daripada is absent. In King’s (1986) book, there is nothing
more about lagi.
Based on the definitions in the Kamus Dewan (Hajah Noresah Baharom
2002: 744), lagi as an adverb in Malay has several meanings. Most of these mean-
ings have been mentioned before, namely, ‘in addition’, ‘again’, ‘more’, ‘as compar-
ison’, and ‘yet/still’. In (6a–f) below, we have combined the meanings from the
Kamus Dewan and the official website Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka9 (translation
and glosses were added by the current author):
(6) a. tambahan kepada yang sedia ada
‘adding more to the existing’
i. Ambil-lah dua ringgit lagi untuk per-belanja-an pulang.
take-lah two dollars lagi for per-expend-an return
‘Do take two dollars more for the expenses of your return trip.’
ii. Lima orang lagi telah di-rawat di rumah sakit.
five people lagi already pass-treat loc house sick
‘Five more people were treated at the hospital.’
b. masih (berpanjangan/berterusan)
‘yet/still (for a long time/going on)’
i. ketika lagi kecil…
while lagi small
‘while still young…’
ii. Adapun Chau Padan itu, lagi di benua Siam.
exist.pun Chau Padan that lagi loc continent Siam
‘As for the Chau Padan, it is still on the continent of Siam.’

9. Available at http://prpm.dbp.gov.my/Cari1?keyword=lagi. Retrieved October 25, 2017.

 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 89

c. dan, serta, tambahan pula

‘and, as well as, also’
i. Rumah-nya cantik lagi bersih.
house-3sg.gen beautiful lagi clean
‘His/Her house is beautiful and also clean.’
ii. Dia hartawan lagi dermawan.
3sg millionaire lagi donor
‘Not only is he a tycoon, he is also a philanthropist.’
d. semula/berulang seperti semula
‘all over again/to repeat like all over again’
i. Baca-lah surat itu se-kali lagi.
read-lah letter that se-time lagi
‘Do read that letter once again.’
ii. Agak-nya ia akan datang lagi hari ini.
guess-adv.suffix 3sg will come lagi day this
‘Guess s/he is coming again today.’
e. lebih (baik, buruk, mahal dll)
‘even more (better, worse, more expensive, etc.)’
i. Bunga yang ini lagi cantik.
flower rel this lagi beautiful
‘This flower is more beautiful.’
ii. Mati lagi bagus.
dead lagi good
‘It is better to be dead.’
f. digunakan untuk menguatkan atau mengeraskan kata-kata sebelumnya
‘to emphasize or to strengthen the words before it’
i. Belakang parang lagi, kalau di-asah nescaya tajam!
back long.knife lagi if pass-sharpen must.be sharp
‘The back of the long knife! [It] will be sharper if sharpened!’
ii. Sekarang-lah kita amuk, bila lagi!
now-lah 1pl crazy when lagi
‘Let’s run amok now, when else!’10

In (6a–f) above, the meanings of lagi are a mixture of adverbials, from “addition”
and “temporal” to “comparative,” and also as the discourse marker “for emphasis,”
which again reflects what Traugott & Dasher (2002) have said about adverbials
with a discourse marker function.

10. One native speaker recommended that amok could also be used as the English trans-
lation for the Malay amok/amuk, because amok has entered the English dictionary.
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amok)
90 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

Among these uses, Sneddon et al. (2012: 205–206) mentioned its use as a tem-
poral marker: “Lagi and tengah [‘in the middle’] can replace sedang [progress-
ing marker], although they are less frequent and not used by all speakers,” as in
(7) below. This is true because this use is not found in Malaysian Malay. Cum-
ming (1991: 69) also listed lagi as a progressive marker, together with sedang (lagi
sedang), but this use is also not found in Malaysian Malay.11
(7) Mereka lagi makan.
3pl lagi eat
‘They are eating.’12 (Sneddon et al. 2012: 205–206)

Rafferty, Burns & Argazali-Thomas (2014: 146) provided some grammar exercises
on lagi in their section on temporal markers; for example, “tidak lagi (the negation
of masih [still])” shows “an event of state is no longer in effect” (e.g., Jam 1:00 siang
Ratih tidak di Imogiri lagi. ‘At 1 p.m., Ratih is no longer in Imogiri.’). The uses
of lagi with negative markers are common in Indonesian and Malaysian Malay.
Sneddon et al. (2012: 212) stated that “[t]he combination of a negative and lagi
means ‘no longer, not any more’. For speakers from some regions, the combination
of belum and lagi means ‘not yet’,” as shown in (8b). The use of the negative tidak
with lagi can be seen in (8c) below:
(8) a. Dia bukan guru lagi.
3sg neg teacher lagi
‘She’s no longer a teacher.’
b. Saya belum lapar lagi.
1sg neg(yet) hungry lagi
‘I’m not hungry yet.’ (Sneddon et al. 2012: 212)

11. Sneddon et al. (2012: 209–210) also stated the following: “[S]udah can precede tidak and
bukan“ and “the combination indicate[s] that what follows is no longer the case.” Lagi is also
seen in the examples below:
(i) Kerana asap menara peng-(k)endali sudah tidak ter-lihat lagi.
because smoke tower peng-control already neg ter-seen lagi
‘Because of the smoke the control tower could no longer be seen.’
(ii) Dia sudah bukan pem-bantu lagi.
3sg already neg pem-help lagi
‘She is no longer a servant.’
12. All examples from Sneddon et al. (2012) were originally in boldface. The boldface was
removed except for lagi. The glosses were also added by the current author. The English free
translation was originally given in the book.
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 91

c. Jam 10:00 pagi Paul mula-i mem-baca.

watch 10:00 morning Paul start-i mem-read
‘At 10 a.m., Paul starts to read.’
Jam 10:30 pagi Paul masih mem-baca.
watch 10:30 morning Paul still mem-read
‘At 10:30 a.m., Paul is still reading.’
Jam 12:00 siang Paul tidak mem-baca lagi.
watch 12:00 noon Paul neg mem-read lagi
‘At 12 noon, Paul is no longer reading.’
(Rafferty et al. 2014: 147; boldface, glosses, and translation added by the
current author)

In Heine & Kuteva (2004: 90), we found a grammaticalization path from compar-
ative (+ negation) to no longer. Among the languages cited, German mehr
‘more’ (when negated) means ‘no longer’ (van Baar 1997: 96), and other languages
such as Arawak sabo ‘be additional’, ‘be superior’ and Vietnamese nūa ‘be addi-
tional’, ‘be superior’ (van Baar 1997: 96) have meanings that lagi also has – ‘more’
and ‘in addition to’ (lagi may have a superior reading if one considers someone
having more of one quality than others).
Since lagi has all these features, it is likely to have undergone the same gram-
maticalization path: lagi can be used in comparative sentences (i.e., Suzi lagi can-
tik. ‘Suzi is more beautiful.’); lagi is often used with the negators belum ‘not yet’,
bukan ‘not’, and tidak ‘not’, two examples of which are given in (8a) and (8b).
When lagi is negated by belum/bukan/tidak, it means ‘something expected has yet
to happen’, as shown in (8b), or ‘is no longer happening’, as can be seen in (8a) and
in the last line in (8c). This shows that “to be a teacher”, “to be hungry”, and “to be
still reading” are expected. In other words, somehow lagi also relays the expecta-
tions of a speaker.
Since lagi also has an iterative meaning, the sentence in (9a) below could
mean kembali ‘to repeat an action’ or ‘again’. Here, it means ‘the child is crying
again’ or ‘the child is back in crying mode’. The meaning in (9b), also appeared in
(6dii), in which the person’s arrival is expected because s/he used to come based
on past experience.
(9) a. Anak itu men-(t)angis lagi.
child that men-cry lagi
‘That child is crying again.’
b. Agak-nya ia akan datang lagi hari ini.
guess-adv.suffix 3sg will come lagi today this
‘It seems that s/he will be coming again today.’
92 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

In what follows, we will first present a reanalysis of lagi, followed by a corpus

investigation of its uses.

3. Methodology

In this study, we ran a reanalysis of lagi. Before we looked at corpus examples, we

first explored the occurrences of lagi in Malay idioms (pepatah and peribahasa).
Malay idioms often appear in parallel constructions and, as such, lagi is frequently
used for comparisons. When lagi appears, it often draws similarities between two
concepts. We selected idioms containing lagi from the Malay idiom dictionary
Kamus Peribahasa (Mohd Tajuddin Abd Rahman 2006). There were altogether 24
idioms containing lagi, among which two idioms were repeated with slight differ-
ences and were counted once only.
Regarding the corpus data, we investigated the actual uses of lagi in news arti-
cles. We used a corpus containing news articles from Utusan Malaysia, a national
Malaysian newspaper, from December 16, 2010, to June 14, 2011. This corpus has a
total of 35,767 news articles and lagi appeared 24,756 times. Since we found uses of
lagi in several positions of a sentence, we also calculated their positions in all the
sentences. We found that 282 (1.14%) instances of lagi appeared in the sentence-
initial position, within which 71 instances were news headlines; 2,537 (10.25%)
appeared before a comma; and 1,537 (6.21%) appeared in the sentence-final posi-
tion. The remaining majority of instances appeared within a sentence.
We then searched for the patterns of lagi in the corpus, from combinations of
two to three words in sequence. We searched for any verbs that appeared on the
left or right of lagi. In return, we collected a list of verbs that could be grouped
as either [verb + lagi] or [lagi + verb] and sometimes both (i.e., the same verb
appeared before and after lagi). From this list of verbs, only six lexical verbs were
found among the top 100 collocates, or the neighboring words that co-appeared
with our keyword lagi. The six verbs were – meningkatkan ‘to raise’, cedera ‘to
injure’, menambahkan ‘to add’, menjadi ‘to become’, memantapkan ‘to strengthen/
empower’, and mengukuhkan ‘to strengthen’.
In the last part of the analysis, we found that lagi serves a special function
in news headlines. The uses of lagi in news headlines will be discussed, and the
special role of lagi in news headlines will also be highlighted. Finally, the seman-
tic relations of the different meanings of lagi and its conceptualization will be
discussed.
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 93

4. Results

The use of lagi in idioms will be discussed first, and then in the corpus in terms of
its collocations and news headlines.

4.1 Lagi in idioms

The occurrence of lagi in each idiom was grouped under the same meaning, as
shown in Table 1 below (additional explanations were obtained from Sapinah Said
(2004) and Abdullah Hassan & Ainon Mohamad (2011)):13
Of the 22 idioms (two were conflated), most carried the meaning ‘more’
whilst several carried the meanings ‘else’, ‘still’, and ‘yet’. Lagi, when negated,
means ‘(not) anymore’. In the idioms, parallelism was found in the use of lagi,
such as lagi murah lagi ditawar ‘the more I reduce [the price], the more he bar-
gains!’, especially in the ‘more’ category.14 The uses of lagi in the idioms mostly
followed nouns or adjectives, rather than verbs. The contexts were mostly neg-
ative, with unfavorable situations; they often pointed out worse situations com-
pared to better ones. Most of the idioms used natural phenomena (e.g., hujan
‘rain’, sawah ‘paddy field’) or essential things in life (e.g., garam ‘salt’, api ‘fire’, ubi
‘yam’) as parables to illustrate a moral principle or attitude. The next section will
present the corpus examples.

4.2 Lagi in the corpus

Lagi in two-word combinations did not return any meaningful results (lagi dengan
‘lagi with’, lagi untuk ‘lagi for’), and therefore will not be discussed. The mean-
ings of lagi only materialized in three-word combinations. In (10a–j) below, some
examples and the meanings of lagi in three-word combinations are shown:
(10) a. tidak lama lagi
neg long lagi
‘not much longer’
b. lebih-lebih lagi
more-red lagi
‘furthermore’

13. We tried to keep the original meaning of lagi in the English translation.
14. Based on the Abridged Malay-English Dictionary online by R. J. Wilkinson. Available at
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/AFU7967.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext. Retrieved
October 25, 2017.
94 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

Table 1. Idioms with lagi

More lagi murah lagi sudah terang, lagi sedangkan lidah lagi berteduh lagi
ditawar ‘the more I bersuluh/lagi lagi tergigit ‘the berkajang ‘the
reduce, the more terang lagi tongue will even shaded place is
he bargains!’ (the bersuluh ‘the sometimes be furthermore given
more one gives, the brighter place was bitten’ (sometimes a roof ’ (to do
more one asks of furthermore we cannot avoid something with
you) touched on’ making mistakes) great care)
(explains Another meaning:
something already ‘a waste of time
known) and money’ (to do
something
redundant)
apa lagi sawa, ia lagi lebai lagi masin lagilah berapa berat mata
berkehendakkan berjanggut ‘the garam sendiri memandang, berat
ayamlah ‘what’s more ‘compared to the lagi bahu memikul
more for a python, knowledgeable (in salt of others, our ‘our eyes are heavy
it needs a chicken’ religion), the more own is more salty’ when watching
(refers to people your moustache (one’s own race is people suffer;
who know what grows’ (the more closer than others) people who suffer
their favorites are) knowledgeable [in are in even more
religion] one pain’
becomes, the better
one behaves)
diam ubi lagi sedangkan gajah senduk dan periuk tidak hujan lagi
kental, diam besi yang besar itu yang lagi terhantuk ‘even becak, inikan pula
lagi sentil ‘a yam berkaki empat lagi a spoon and pot hujan/ tak hujan
that is cut and kadang-kadang will knock against lagikan becak,
placed quietly will terserandung ‘even one another’ inikan pula hujan
become more the four-legged (misunderstandings ‘even when it is
solid, metal that is large elephant trips sometimes happen not raining, the
cut and placed and falls among relatives, floor is muddy;
quietly will sometimes’ (the spouses, etc. who even more when it
become spotty strong person with are close) is raining’ (an
with rust’ (a quiet power still has innocent man will
person who is some weaknesses) be accused, what’s
thinking is more more a guilty man)
diligent; a quiet
person who is not
thinking is useless)
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 95

Table 1. (continued)
Else (If muda akan tua, sabung selepas hari sudah terlalu hilir seperti api makan
negated) hidup akan mati, petang, tidak dapat malam, apa hendak lalang kering, tidak
(Not) dunia akan tinggal, menuntut balas dikatakan lagi ‘it’s dapat dipadamkan
Anymore bilakah lagi? ‘the lagi ‘the last fight too late at night, lagi ‘like fire that
young will become (try) is the fight there is nothing consumes the
old, the living will that wins the most, else you can say long-bladed grass,
become dead, the the opponent (do)’ it cannot be
riches in the world cannot fight back extinguished
will be left behind, anymore because anymore’ (people
when else [can one it is the last fight’ who cannot reject
enjoy life]?’ (refers (refers to a trial something
to someone who that depends dangerous will
wants to enjoy the entirely on luck) eventually be faced
goodness in life with something
before death) dangerous)
kalau kucing tidak tempayan menjadi
bermisai, tikus raga, tak akan
tidak akan takut berair lagi ‘a
lagi ‘if a cat loses water-barrel that
its moustache, the has become a
rat will no longer rattan basket will
be afraid of it no longer hold
anymore’ (a water anymore’ (if
powerful person someone is
who loses his/her extravagant in
status will not be spending money, a
feared by others rich man can
anymore) become poor)
Still jalan mati lagi cekur jerangau
dicuba, inikan pula masih ada lagi di
jalan binasa ‘a road ubun-ubun ‘a type
with a dead end is of herb (whose
still/even used, roots are made into
what’s more a medicine) is still
broken one’ (refers showing the tip of
to someone who is its head when
brave and is willing growing’ (refers to
to try all younger people
possibilities) who want to fight
older ones).
Yet belum tahu lagi, embun belum
ayam masih kering lagi ‘the
berlaga ‘not yet morning dew has
known, the not yet dried’ (it’s
chicken is still still too early)
fighting’ (there are
no results yet)
96 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

c. dan banyak lagi

and more lagi
‘and much more’
d. kata-nya se-orang lagi
say-3sg.gen se-class lagi
‘s/he said another person’
e. se-orang lagi pen-duduk
se-class lagi pen-sit
‘another resident’
f. dan pelbagai lagi
and various lagi
‘and many varieties more’
g. dan se-orang lagi
and se-class lagi
‘and one more person’
h. awal-awal lagi
early-red lagi
‘at the very beginning’
i. tidak perlu lagi
neg need lagi
‘no longer needed’
j. dalam satu lagi
in one lagi
‘in one more’

We also retrieved the patterns [X lagi] and [lagi X] and made several observations.
First, [X lagi] was very much like the occurrences in (10a–j). Second, most of the
Xs in [X lagi] were function words, including many instances with numbers, as in
(11a), or those related to counting (11b) and negation (11c).
(11) a. Men-(t)urut laman web People’s Daily, enam orang ter-bunuh and 15
me-follow page web People’s Daily six people ter-kill dan 15
lagi injure
lagi cedera…
‘According to the People’s Daily website, six were killed and 15 more were
injured…’
b. Restoran E&Y (Sahul) Taman Daya di sini se-kali lagi
restaurant E&Y (Sahul) Taman Daya loc here se-class lagi
men-jadi tumpu-an masyarakat di kawasan berkenaan
men-become focus-an society loc area related
‘Restaurant E&Y (Sahul) Taman Daya here has once again become the
focus of the residents in that area.’
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 97

c. Moral, ke-benar-an dan integriti tidak lagi men-jadi sandar-an

moral ke-true-an and integrity neg lagi men-become support-an
para pem-(p)impin pem-bangkang.
many pem-lead pem-oppose
‘Moral, truth and integrity no longer have the backing of the opposition
leaders.’

Third, when we targeted our search to [verb + lagi] and [lagi + verb], we observed
that six verbs that appeared among the top 100 high-frequency collocates were
meningkatkan ‘to raise’ (12a), cedera ‘to injure’ (12b), menambahkan ‘to add’, men-
jadi ‘to become’, memantapkan ‘to strengthen/empower’, and mengukuhkan ‘to
strengthen.’ These verbs collocated strongly with lagi.
(12) a. peny-(s)elidik-an dan pem-bangun-an bagi men-(t)ingkat-kan lagi
peny-research-an and pem-develop-an for men-raise-kan lagi
mutu pen-didik-an…
quality pen-educate-an
‘the research and development to further improve the quality of educa-
tion…’
b. Malang Drogba cedera lagi.
dismay Drogba injure lagi
‘Unfortunate [adjective] Drogba was injured again.’

Fourth, Xs in [lagi X] showed some meaningful lexical words and we would

expect that [lagi X] had uses not discovered before. We will discuss this in the next
section.

4.3 Lagi in news articles

In addition to the above, we found that lagi plays a special function in news head-
lines. The occurrence of lagi in the sentence-initial position was rare (as reported,
less than 2%), yet 25.18% (71 from 282 sentence-initial cases) of these rare cases
were found in news headlines. The remaining sentence-initials were 47.87% con-
junctives, lagi pun (114) and lagi pula (21). The final 23.95% were miscellaneous
uses of [lagi + adjectives] (e.g., lagi banyak ‘even more’, lagi teruk ‘even worse’, etc.)
and [lagi + number/amount] (e.g., lagi ramai ‘even more (people)’, lagi 10 ‘10 more’,
lagi tujuh ‘seven more’, etc.). Some examples of the findings are shown in (13a–d)
below:
98 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

(13) a. Akhir-nya abang buka mulut, kata abang kalau ayah

final-adv.suffix brother open mouth say brother if father
kesian-kan ibu dan anak-anak lepas-kan ibu. Lagi ayah
sympathize-kan mother and child-red let.go-kan mother lagi father
marah, dia tuduh ibu hasut anak-anak.
angry 3sg accuse mother instigate child-red
‘Finally Brother said something. He said that if Father sympathized with
Mother and the children, just let her go. Father was even more angry. He
accused Mother of instigating the children to do so.’
b. Tak payah-lah me-rayu-rayu. Lagi teruk jika dia anggap anda sudah
neg need-lah me-beg-red lagi terrible if 3sg thought 2sg already
tidak wujud dalam hidup-nya.
neg exist in life-3sg.gen
‘Don’t need to beg. It would be more terrible if s/he thought you didn’t
exist in his/her life anymore.’
c. Semakin ber-kuasa lelaki itu, semakin berani diri-nya, malah
more ber-powerful man that more brave self-3sg.gen even
me-rasa-kan diri-nya di atas sempadan undang-undang. Lagi
me-feel-kan self-3sg.gen loc above border law-red lagi
banyak di-dedah-kan perihal pesta seks di ke-diam-an-nya,
many pass-expose-kan subject party sex loc ke-reside-an-3sg.gen
lagi selamba dia me-nafi-kan-nya.
lagi rude 3sg me-deny-kan-3sg.gen
‘As the man was more powerful, he became braver; he even felt that he was
above the law…. The more he was exposed to sex scandals (literarily, ‘sex
party’) in his residency, the more he denied it shamelessly.’
d. Apa yang di-perlu-kan ialah alamat. Kalau ada gambar sasar-an
what rel pass-need-kan equa address if exist photo target-an
lagi bagus, nombor telefon, nombor kereta dan beberapa
lagi good number telephone number car and several
maklumat lain. Lagi banyak maklumat lagi me-mudah-kan kerja
information other lagi many information lagi me-easy-kan work
peny-(s)iasat.
peny-investigate
‘What is needed is the address. If there is a picture of the target it is even
better, or telephone number, car number, and other information. The
more information obtained, the easier the work of the investigator.’

Not only were cases of the sentence-initial position rare, the grammar of the
news headlines was also uncommon in the convention of lagi. In the news head-
lines, lagi was usually followed by an event, usually an existing one (i.e., [Lagi +
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 99

existing event]), as shown in (14a–g) below. In these sentences, lagi could mean
‘again’ or ‘another/one more’, referring to the addition of another incident to the
many already existing. For each of these examples, we checked the news con-
tent to find out the correct translation of these headlines. The context is given in
parentheses.
(14) a. Lagi di-dakwa pecah amanah lebih RM14 juta
lagi pass-charge break trust more RM14 million
‘Again, being charged with breach of trust over RM14 million’
(After being charged with two charges, the person involved was charged
again for another crime.)
b. Lagi maut protes anti-kerajaan di Yemen
lagi dead protest anti-government loc Yemen
‘Again, deadly anti-government protests in Yemen’
(The protests that had caused many deaths had been taking place for a
long period of time. Lagi here means ‘there again’.)
c. Lagi wanita di-simbah asid
lagi female pass-splash acid
‘Again, women were splashed with acid.’
(One more incident was added to 22 incidents in the past.)
d. Lagi sampah di bahu jalan
lagi trash loc shoulder road
‘Again, trash on sidewalk’
(This phenomenon happened again. It refers not only to one incident of a
person littering but to the repetitiveness of the phenomena.)
e. Lagi anugerah untuk Berjaya Hills
lagi award for Berjaya Hills
‘Again, awards for Berjaya Hills’
(Berjaya Hills had received many awards; this added to the number of
awards.)
f. Lagi mayat bayi di pusat pe-lulus-an[sic. correct:pe-lupus-an] sampah
lagi corpse baby loc center pe-destroy-an trash
‘Again, [a] dead baby at the garbage center’
(Another dead baby was found.)
g. Lagi rumah musnah ter-bakar di Tawau
lagi house destroy ter-burn loc Tawau
‘Again, houses were destroyed by fire in Tawau.’
(Another house was burned down after two others, which all happened
within four days.)

Although the translation of ‘more houses/more deaths’, etc., probably makes bet-
ter grammatical sense, this does not reflect the original sentences. It can be seen
100 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

that most uses of lagi above formed independent constituents in these examples.
Although the use of lagi expressed the repeatedness of the incident, it was added
deliberately to the initial position in the headlines to emphasize that this was not
a single event but, rather, it had happened before. For instance, in (14d), instead
of saying “Trash again on the Roadside” the placement of lagi in the first position
produced a reading of “Again! Trash on the Roadside!” It is worth noting that lagi
was not used in a conventional way in these sentences. All the examples above
show that an incident or event, often a repeated one, was mentioned after lagi. The
discourse function of lagi can be related to the functions of adverbs as mentioned
in Traugott & Dasher (2002: 153):

Not all languages use adverbs; fewer yet use them polysemously…but if they do,
there is an overwhelming tendency for them to develop from clause-internal or
‘predicate adverbs’ to sentential adverbs, and ultimately to discourse makers or
‘connective adverbs’.
(Traugott 1995, Ramat & Ricca 1998: 248)

In most of these uses, lagi means ‘more’ and ‘again’ in the structure [lagi +
existing event]. The placement of lagi in the sentence-initial position emphasizes
the “repetitiveness” of the event rather than the event itself. In addition, most of
the time the repeated events were negative or undesirable. Thus, one of the major
findings of this study is that the reoccurrence of events increased the impact of the
issues mentioned in the news articles.
Abraham’s (1991: 332) study on modal particles claimed that “[t]here is a lim-
ited number of lexemes in German each of which is ambiguous with respect to
grammatical category.” Abraham’s list includes adverbs and “sentential connec-
tors” such as aber ‘but’, schon ‘already’, “scalar particles” such as nur ‘only, auch
‘also’, and many others. Abraham (1991: 373) found that these modal particles “exist
side by side” with the “non-particle and non-modal use” of the same terms and
display “systematic bleaching of the semantic content” following the “unidirec-
tional cline”, as shown below:

localistic > temporal > logical > illocutive/discourse functional

Although we did not investigate diachronic data and lagi does not have a localis-
tic use (defined as “locality, or topology” [Abraham 1991: 373]), lagi displays tem-
poral and logical (defined as “communicative anaphor in the sense of causal
confirmation with respect to what had been uttered just before develops” [Abra-
ham 1991: 365]) as well as illocutive/discourse functional meaning change.15

15. Traugott & Dasher (2002: 154) bracketed localistic and temporal and claimed that these
two stages are optional. Further discussion of grammaticalization paths can also be found in
Traugott (1989) and Traugott & König (1991).
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 101

In other words, lagi behaves rather similarly to some of the modal particles men-
tioned in Abraham’s (1991) study.

5. Conceptualization of Lagi

Based on what we found, we will summarize the uses of lagi in this section. After
we went through the meanings of lagi, we postulated that there were three mean-
ing concepts of lagi: addition/more meaning, less-more continuum, and tem-
poral lagi (‘not yet’, ‘again’). These concepts are shown in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1. Conceptualization of the meanings of lagi

Figure (1a) shows the addition/more meaning. In this meaning, lagi is used to
indicate ‘in addition to the existing condition’. This meaning can be used literally
with the addition of numbers (as in “five more people were hospitalized”) and
metaphorically to mean ‘not only…but also’. The less or more concept is shown
more completely in Figure (1b). The addition meaning is closely related to the
less-more continuum, represented by expressions or idioms that mean ‘the more
the better’.
102 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

The meanings ‘yet/still’ and ‘again’ of lagi are explained in Figure (1c), which
shows the temporal lagi. Sneddon et al. (2012: 211–212) suggested that lagi with
the meaning of kembali ‘return’ “has the meaning ‘return to [a] former state’,” as
in Example (9a) Anak itu menangis lagi. ‘That child is crying again.’. In Figure (1c),
we displayed these two meanings as part of a circle instead of a straight line
because lagi without negation has a ‘repeat’ meaning. We considered that the
negation of lagi (belum/tidak/bukan lagi) meaning ‘not yet’ or ‘no longer’ was part
of the movement from point A to point B, which was not completed, but the
‘again’ meaning moved from point A to point B and then back to point A again,
and therefore was repeated.
From the above, one can see how these unrelated meanings can be linked.
The conceptualization of lagi helps explain how some seemingly random mean-
ings of lagi are related. In terms of the grammaticalization of these uses, we found
several useful paths from the list provided by Heine & Kuteva (2004), as dis-
cussed below, in terms of their matching of meaning concepts of lagi. Heine &
Kuteva’s (2004: 15) concepts are “semantic-functional, rather than morphological
or syntactic, categories.”

5.1 iterative > still

“In the case of the iterative the action is repeated on the same occasion” (Heine &
Kuteva 2004: 183). In (15) below, the example from (6dii) is repeated:
(15) Agak-nya ia akan datang lagi hari ini.
guess-adv.suffix 3sg.gen will come lagi day this
‘Guess s/he is coming again today.’16

Therefore, iterative could mean that the same action is repeated on the same
occasion. From many of the headlines we mentioned earlier, as in (16) below,
repeated from (14d), one can also see the iterativeness of the action (someone
threw trash on the roadside):
(16) Lagi sampah di bahu jalan
lagi trash loc shoulder road
‘Again, trash on sidewalk’

16. This example is similar to the example given in (Heine & Kuteva 2004: 184) for iterative >
still for Tayo CF (Kihm 1995: 239):
(i) Ta fini vja jer, ta vja akor dema.
thou cpl come yesterday thou come again tomorrow
‘You came yesterday; you’ll come again tomorrow.’
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 103

The evidence above shows that lagi has an iterative reading. iterative also
has a connection with still: “[I]t would seem that the still-meaning arises
when, instead of a repetition, the situation implies a duration that is longer than
expected” (Heine & Kuteva 2004: 90). There are also uses of ‘still’ for lagi. In (17)
below, lagi has a possible meaning of ‘still’:
(17) Ada orang kata kalau per-kahwin-an kita dari awal lagi tidak
exist people say if per-marry-an 1pl from early lagi neg
di-per-setuju-i oleh mertua, maka sampai ke mati pun kita tidak akan
pass-per-agree-i by in.laws then until loc death pun 1pl neg will
di-suka-i-nya.
pass-like-i-3sg.gen
‘Some people say that if our marriage is not agreed/blessed by our in-laws
from the beginning (literally, since early still), then until death they will not
like us (literally, we will not be liked by them).’

Example (17) could be a temporal meaning of still but this meaning is disappear-
ing for the phrase dari awal lagi is almost lexicalized.17 The ‘on-going’ meaning of
lagi is perhaps that in (18) below. Example (18) means that the husband has not
returned yet.
(18) Dalam kes pertama, se-orang isteri ke-dua men-(t)untut fasakh setelah
in case first se-class wife ke-two men-claim annulment after
suami keluar dari rumah dan tidak pulang lagi selepas itu.
husband exit from house and neg return lagi after that
‘In the first case, a second wife claimed annulment after her husband left and
did not return anymore after that.’

5.2 return (‘to return’, ‘to go back (to)’) > iterative (Heine & Kuteva
2004: 259–260)

For return, it is the kembali meaning that was previously shown in the example
from Sneddon et al. (2012: 211–212) – Anak itu menangis lagi. ‘That child is crying

17. The combination of dari awal lagi and the still meaning of masih lagi deserve further
investigation.
Namun begitu, ke-lihat-an juga beberapa pe-serta yang masih lagi di-lihat
however so ke-look-an also several pe-follow(participant) rel still lagi pass-look
se-olah-olah hilang arah…
se-if-red lost direction
‘Nevertheless, it was seen that several contestants were still looking seemingly/apparently lost…’
104 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

again.’ – which means that the child is returning “to a former state.” In (19a), saya
tidak sanggup melakukannya lagi… ‘I am not able to do it anymore…’ means
that the speaker had done something before, but he was unable to do the same
thing again. This example has both return and iterative meanings. When it
means return, it shows that the speaker was unable to return to what he had
done previously. When it is the iterative meaning, it means that the speaker was
unable to repeat what he had done before. If lagi was removed, saya tidak sanggup
melakukannya would lose both the return and iterative meanings. In (19b),
the understanding is that the “husband” returned to the status of “married,” but
it is more common to say that the “husband” married again (thus, iterative). In
(19c), ‘once again’, the same tactic of smuggling drugs was used.
(19) a. saksi itu meny-(k)ata-kan “Sebab sebenar saya tidak rela lagi…”
witness that meny-say-kan reason actual 1sg neg willing lagi
dan bagi soal-an “Apa respons kamu?”, pe-muda itu
and for question-an what response 2sg pe-young that
meny-(k)ata-kan “Saya tidak sanggup me-laku-kan-nya lagi…”
meny-say-kan 1sg neg able me-do-kan-3.sg.gen lagi
‘That witness said, “The real reason is that I am not willing anymore.” And
for the question “What is your response?”, the young person said, “I am
not able to do it anymore…”’
b. Ibu faham pe-rasa-an se-orang wanita apabila men-dapat tahu
mother understand pe-feel-an se-class female when men-get know
suami-nya ber-kahwin lagi.
husband-3sg.gen ber-marry lagi
‘I (a Mom referring to herself) understand the feeling of a woman when
she finds out that her husband has remarried.’18
c. Selepas se-orang lelaki warga Iran di-tahan kerana meny-(s)orok-kan
after se-class male citizen Iran pass-detain because meny-hide-kan
dadah dalam ruang khas beg bulan lalu, se-kali lagi taktik sama
drug in space special bag month last se-time lagi tactic same
di-guna-kan untuk meny-(s)eludup dadah ke negeri ini.
pass-use-kan for meny-smuggle drug loc country this
‘After a male Iranian citizen was detained because of hiding drugs in a spe-
cial compartment in a bag last month, the same tactic was used once again
to smuggle drugs to this country.’

18. It could also be translated as a third person telling how ‘Mom understands the feeling of a
woman when she knows her husband will remarry.’
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 105

These examples show clearer uses of iterative meaning but less of the return
meaning because return seems to be implied while iterative happens.

5.3 remain > durative (Heine & Kuteva 2004: 254)

remain is exemplified by the “Vietnamese còn ‘remain’, ‘still exist’, ‘be still alive’”
and the “German bleiben ‘remain’,” while durative refers to “continuative adver-
bial marker ‘still’” in Vietnamese and “the auxiliary used to express continued
activity” in German; durative is also defined similarly with continuous – ‘be
doing’, ‘keep on doing’ – as a marker for an event that is in progress at a specific
reference time and combines the notions of both progressive and durative aspects
(Heine & Kuteva 2004: 19).
For lagi, we found the adverbial use of lagi to mean ‘still’ in (20a): lagi alone
means ‘still exist’ (remain). For durative, we tested the use of lagi with the prefix
ber- in (20b) and with an adjective in (20c). In (20b), lagi marks the fact that
Abang Jamal was sad before the moment of speaking, although we could not tell
whether his sadness was continuous or on-and-off (iterative). Without lagi, the
durative meaning is less obvious. In (20c), rasa malu lagi means that the speaker
was still feeling embarrassed at the moment of speaking. If lagi was removed in
(20c), the durative meaning would be removed too – rasa malu adalah kerana…
‘feel embarrassed because…’.
(20) a. Lagi 10 tahun kita men-(t)emu-i tahun 2020.
lagi 10 year 1pl men-meet-i year 2020
‘In another 10 years we will meet 2020.’
b. Mudah-mudah-an dengan ter-siar-nya ke-nyata-an ini
easy-red-an with ter-announce-3sg.gen ke-clear-an this
Abang Jamal kita tak ber-sedih lagi.
brother Jamal 1pl neg ber-sad lagi
‘Hopefully with the announcement of this statement our Brother Jamal
will not be sad anymore.’
106 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

c. Saya tidak pernah letak harga tinggi walaupun sudah ber-lakon enam
1sg neg ever put price high although already ber-act six
filem. Ada orang gelar Sara bakal ratu filem 2011. Mesti popular
film exist people call.name Sara future queen film 2011 must popular
selepas ini? Saya tak rasa popular pun. Rasa malu lagi adalah kerana
after this 1sg neg feel popular pun feel shy lagi equa because
filem belum keluar muka saya sudah keluar suratkhabar dan majalah.
film neg(yet) exit face 1sg already exit newspaper and magazine
‘I never requested for a high pay although [I] had starred in six movies.
There were people who called Sara [me] as the potential 2011 movie queen.
Must [I] be popular after this? I do not feel popular at all. [The reason
why] I still feel shy/embarrassed [is] because the movie is not out yet and
my face is already out in the newspapers and magazines.’

For this path, we found many instances that were both remain and durative. We
did not find many that carried only one of the concepts.

5.4 comparative (+ negation) > no longer

This path was discussed in Section 2. Two examples are further provided below, in
(21a–b):
(21) a. Pihak ber-kuasa perlu ber-tindak segera dan jangan lagi ber-diam diri
party ber-power need ber-act quick and neg lagi ber-silent self
dan buat tidak tahu sahaja, nanti orang ramai akan terus “ber-pesta”
and do neg know only then people crowd will continue ber-feast
mem-buang sampah di sini, kata-nya.
mem-throw trash loc here say-3sg.gen
‘The authorities should act quickly and not stay silent anymore and pre-
tend that they did not know, or people will continue to “feast” and throw
trash here, s/he said.’
b. Saya ber-harap untuk tahun baru 2011 ini tiada lagi sengketa
1sg ber-hope for year new 2011 this neg.exist lagi conflict
antara saya dan pe-lakon ter-sebut.
between 1sg and pe-act ter-mention(that)
‘I hope for the new year of 2011 not to have any more conflict between me
and that actor.’

The paths above are some of those we found that were related to several different
meaning concepts of lagi. However, there are some missing links. For instance,
we did not find a path that linked iterative (+ negation) > no longer, which
makes perfect sense because ceasing a repeated activity is to say that it no longer
happens. Yet, from the above, we found a better explanation of the different
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 107

meanings of lagi and built a clearer connection between meanings that previously
seemed unrelated.

6. Conclusion

Our corpus investigation and research on meaning conceptualization provide a

re-analysis of lagi, an adverb that is often ignored. In dictionaries and in gram-
mar books, lagi has never been the focus of discussion. The main reason is that its
meanings are too diverse and to generalize all its meanings is difficult. Our study
shed light on this by providing better connections between the various uses of lagi.
We also postulated possible meaning changes that might affect the various uses of
lagi, including its ‘addition’, ‘comparative’, ‘temporal’, and discourse functions. We
showed the possible conceptualizations involved with the meanings of lagi and the
relationships between the different meanings.
Lagi, with a dominant ‘iterative’ meaning, can be negated to mean something
expected has yet to happen. To find uses of lagi, we examined idioms and a corpus
of news articles to relate its different meanings using grammatical paths observed
in other languages. One of our major findings is that lagi has pragmatic func-
tions that emphasize the non-singularity of an event, especially when it appears in
newspaper headlines. The unconventional use of lagi at the beginning of headlines
emphasizes the repetitiveness of an event.
The possible grammaticalization paths that have been discussed in this paper
can be compared to other languages and may thus contribute to typological stud-
ies in the future. From a pedagogical perspective, some idiomatic expressions with
lagi could be introduced to learners at the beginning level, especially the ones with
the dominant ‘iterative’ meanings (e.g., jumpa lagi ‘see you again’ (goodbye) and
sekali lagi ‘once more’). These commonly used expressions are also very practical
in daily conversations.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the reviewers and the Editors-in-Chief for their detailed com-
ments and suggestions on the previous version of this work. Part of this paper was presented
as a conference paper in 2017 at the Twenty-First International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian
Linguistics (ISMIL 21), co-authored with Suet-Ching Soon. This is a new version written by
the author alone. The author acknowledges support from Suet-Ching Soon, comments from
Professor Jung-hsing Chang, and proofreading from Zaamah Mohd Nor and Dr. Mardiana
Idris for the Malay data. This paper was partially supported by the following research grants
from the Ministry of Science and Technology: 104-2420-H-004-034-MY2 and
106-2410-H-004-109-MY2.
108 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

List of abbreviations

1sg first person singular pronoun

2sg second person singular pronoun
3sg third person singular pronoun
-an affix -an
-i affix -i
adv.suffix adverbializer suffix
ber- affix ber-
class classifier
equa equative
exist existential
-kan affix -kan
ke- affix ke-
lagi lagi
lah lah
loc locative marker
me-, men-, mem-, meny-, meng-, mem- active affixes me-, men-, mem-, meny-, meng-, mem-
per- per-
neg negator
pass passive di-
pe-, pen-, pem-, peny-, peng- affixes pe-, pen-, peny-, peng-
pl plural
pun pun
red reduplication
rel relative linker
se- affix se-
ter- affix ter-

References

Abdullah Hassan, and Ainon Mohamad. 2011. Kamus Peribahasa Kontemporari (Edisi Ketiga)
[Contemporary Dictionary of Proverbs (3rd edition.)]. Selangor: PTS Publications &
Distributors Sdn. Bhd.
Abraham, Werner. 1991. The grammaticalization of the German modal particles. Approaches to
Grammaticalization, vol. 2, ed. by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Heine, 331–380.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.19.2.17abr
Benjamin, Geoffrey. 1993. Grammar and polity: The cultural and political background to
Standard Malay. The Role of Theory in Language Description, ed. by William A. Foley,
341–392. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110872835.341
Blakemore, Diane. 1987. Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cumming, Susanna. 1991. Functional Change: The Case of Malay Constituent Order. Berlin &
New York: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110864540
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 109

Fazal Mohamed Mohamed Sultan, Junaini Kasdan, Zaharani Ahmad, and

Nor Hashimah Jalaluddin. 2010. Struktur kata kerja transitif + lagi dalam kalangan pelajar
sekolah menengah [The structure of transitive verb + lagi among secondary school
students]. Jurnal Linguistik 10:36–47.
Franstišek Kratochvíl, Nur Izdihar Ismail, and Diyana Hamzah. 2018. Stance, categorisation,
and information structure in Malay. Perspectives on Information Structure in Austronesian
Languages, ed. by Sonja Riesberg, Asako Shiohara, and Atsuko Utsumi, 41–80. Berlin:
Language Science Press.
Fraser, Bruce. 1988. Types of English discourse markers. Acta Linguistica Hungarica
38.1–4:19–33.
Goddard, Cliff. 2001. Sabar, iklas, setia – Patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some
“virtues” in Malay and English. Journal of Pragmatics 33:653–681.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378‑2166(00)00028‑X
Goddard, Cliff. 2002. Semantic primes and universal grammar in Malay (Bahasa Melayu).
Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings, vol. 1, ed. by
Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, 87–172. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.10god
Hajah Noresah Baharom (ed.) 2002. Kamus Dewan (Edisi Ketiga) [Dictionary Dewan (3rd
edition)]. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kementerian Pendidikan.
Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva. 2004. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, Paul J. 1983. Ergative, passive, and active in Malay narrative. Discourse Perspectives on
Syntax, ed. by Flora Klein-Andrew, 67–88. New York & London: Academic Press.
Kihm, Alain. 1995. Tayo, the strange bird from the New Caledonia: Determiners and
tense-aspect in Tayo and their implications for creolization theories. Journal of Pidgin and
Creole Languages 10.2:225–252. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.10.2.02kih
King, Edward S. 1986. Write Malay: An introduction to the modern written language for
English-speaking Malaysians. Singapore & Kuala Lumpur: Times Books International.
Koh, Ann Sweesun. 1990. Topics in Colloquial Malay. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Department of Linguistics and Language Studies, University of Melbourne, Melbourne,
Australia.
Longacre, Robert E. 1985. Sentences as combinations of clauses. Language Typology and
Syntactic Description: Complex Constructions, vol. 2, ed. by Timothy Shopen, 235–286.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mohd Tajuddin Abd Rahman. 2006. Kamus Peribahasa (Edisi Ketiga) [Dictionary of Proverbs
(3rd edition.)]. Shah Alam, Selangor: Oxford Fajar.
Nik Safiah Karim, Farid M. Onn, Hashim Musa, and Abdul Hamid Mahmood. 1996.
Tatabahasa Dewan (Edisi Baharu) [Grammar-Dewan (New edition)]. Kuala Lumpur:
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
Nik Safiah Karim, Farid M. Onn, Hashim Musa, and Abdul Hamid Mahmood. 2008.
Tatabahasa Dewan (Edisi Ketiga) [Grammar-Dewan (3rd edition)]. Kuala Lumpur:
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
Rafferty, Ellen, Molly Burns, and Shintia Argazali-Thomas. 2014. Indonesian Grammar in
Context. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.
110 Siaw-Fong Chung [鍾曉芳]

Ramat, Paolo, and Davide Ricca. 1998. Sentence adverbs in the languages of Europe. Adverbials
Constructions in the Languages of Europe, ed. by Johan Van der Auwera and
Dónall P. Ó Baoill, 187–275. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802610.187
Rohaizah Ab. Karim. 2014. Huraian kata adverba bahasa Melayu berdasarkan data korpus
berkomputer [Description of adverbs in the Malay language based on computerized
corpus]. Pendeta: Jurnal Bahasa, Pendidikan dan Sastera Melayu 5.1:91–112.
Sapinah Said. 2004. Kamus Peribahasa Melayu [Dictionary of Malay Proverbs]. Johor Bahru,
Johor: Penerbitan Pelangi.
Sew, Jyh Wee. 2016. Aspect in Malay verbs: Realigning time and volition to Malay events. Issues
in Language Studies 5.1:44–63.
Sneddon, James Neil, K. Alexander Adelaar, Dwi N. Djenar, and Michael Ewing. 2012.
Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar (2nd edition). London & New York: Routledge.
Soh, Hooi Ling, and Hiroki Nomoto. 2011. The Malay verbal prefix meN- and the
unergative/unaccusative distinction. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 20.1:77–106.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831‑010‑9069‑5
Soh, Hooi Ling. 2013. Voice and aspect: Some notes from Malaysian Malay. NUSA: Linguistic
Studies of Languages in and around Indonesia 54:159–173.
Sulaiman Masri, Mashudi Bahari, and Juliliyana Mohd Junid. 2007. Bahasa Melayu [Malay
Language]. Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Publications & Distributors Sdn. Bhd.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1989. On the rise of epistemic meaning in English: An example of
subjectification in semantic change. Language 65:31–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/414841
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1995. The role of discourse markers in a theory of
grammaticalization. Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Manchester: University of Manchester.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1999. The role of pragmatics in semantic change. Pragmatics in 1998:
Selected Papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference, vol. 2, ed. by
Jef Verschueren, 93–102. Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, and Ekkehard König. 1991. The semantics-pragmatics of
grammaticalization revisited. Approaches to Grammaticalization, vol. 1, ed. by
Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Heine, 189–218. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.19.1.10clo
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
van Baar, Tim. 1997. Phasal Polarity. Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam.
Zaharani Ahmad, and Nor Hashimah Jalaluddin. 2012. Incorporating structural diversity in
the Malay grammar. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies 12.1:17–34.
 Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay 111

Address for correspondence

Siaw-Fong Chung
Department of English
National Chengchi University
Taipei, TAIWAN
Siaw-Fong Chung: sfchung@nccu.edu.tw

Publication history

Date received: 8 January 2018

Date revised: 23 May 2018
Date accepted: 20 December 2018