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Trustees of Indiana UniversityAnthropological Linguistics

Topic and Focus in SundaneseAuthor(s): Franz Müller-GotamaSource:

Anthropological Linguistics,

Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 117-132Published by: The Trustees of Indiana University on behalf of Anthropological LinguisticsStable URL:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028445

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Topicand Focus in Sundanese

FRANZMQiLALER-GOTAMA

CaliforniaStateUniversity,FullertonAbstract.Thispaperfocuses onthegrammaticaltreatment of informationinSundanese.Usingdata frompublishedsources as wellasfromelicitedexamples,I show that Sundaneseemploysthreeparticles,mah, teh,andtea,formarkingnew,given,and reintroducedinformation,respectively.Inques-tion-answersequences,tehappearsin thequestion,markingthesettingof thequestion,whilemahappearsin theanswer,where it marks the new infor-mationprovided.Whilethese threeparticlesserve thesinglefunction ofmarking pragmaticroles,theyarequitedifferent in theirsyntacticbehaviorand text distribution.Specifically,mah andtehoccurmmediatelytotherightofanymaximalphrase,while teaappearsas a determiner.1. Introduction. Sundanese is themajor languageinthe Indonesianpro-vince of West Java.As asubjectoflinguistic investigation,it has beenneg-lected aslinguistshave focusedtheir interestson itsneighbors,Javanese andIndonesian,both ofwhich arecloselyrelated and sharemanybasictypologicalpropertieswith Sundanese.Sundanese was first describedbythe Dutchlin-guistSierkCoolsma,whopublishedagrammar(1873)and adictionary(1913).Modernlinguisticwork waspioneered byR. H. Robinsinaseries of articles(1953a, 1953b, 1957, 1959,1965, 1968),whichexplorebasicphonologicalandmorphological propertiesof thelanguagefrom a structuralistperspective.Morerecently, Hardjadibrata(1985)hasproducedatagmemicgrammar,whileWessing(1976)has studiedpluralization. Linguisticworkpublishedin In-donesiagenerallyconcentrates onmorphology; DjajasudarmaIdat(1986),inparticular,hasprovidedanoutstandingstudyof inchoativeparticlesin Sun-danese.Theparticlesmah,teh,and teahave receivedonlycursorydiscussioninthe literature.Hardjadibrata(1985:33)distinguishesthemfrom othertypesofparticles, listingthemas onegroup among"markers ofemphasis"andas"phrasemarkers,"butheprovidesno discussion orexamples.In this article Iintend to showthatthese threeparticlesserve todelineatetheinformationstructureof atext. Theparticlemah is shown tobea focus markerintroducingnew1or thematizedinformation,while teh is amarker ofknowninformation,and teaindicates that apreviouslymentionedparticipantisbeingreintro-ducedinto the discourse.Syntactically,mah and tehadjointo therightofanymaximalconstituent,2while teabehaves like aspecialkindof determiner.117

118 ANTHROPOLOGICALINGUISTICS

No. 1

The dataforthisstudycome fromvarioustypesoftexts,includingthenovelPaeh diPopotongan (Hardjadibrata1932),the weekliesGiwangkaraandMangle,a series of readers entitledPiwulangBasa(Sumarsonoand Fatur-ohman1988)and a collection of children's stories entitledWarna-WarnaKaulinan(Sumarna1986).Additional data wereprovided bySundanese lan-guageconsultants.2. Functional considerations.Theuniquedistributions ofmah, teh,andtea cannot beestablished within individual sentences. All threeoccur inter-changeablyinmanyof the samesyntacticenvironments,as shown in ex-amples(la)-(lc),where each follows the same nounphrase.Use of thesepar-ticles alsoseems to besyntactically "optional,"in the sense that a sentence in-cludingnoneofthem,suchas(ld),will still be wellformed.(la)Si Nini mahdigawedi kantor.

Nini mah work in office'Niniworksinan office.'(lb)Si Nini tehdigawedi kantor.

Nini teh work in office'Nini works in an office.'(ic)Si Nini teadigawedi kantor.

Nini tea work in office'Nini works in an office.'(ld)Si Ninidigawedi kantor.

PNNiniwork in office

'Nini works in an office.'When theanalyticaldomain is extendedbeyondthesentence,the dis-tinctive functions oftheseparticlesbegintoemerge.While sentences(la)-(ld)are all translated intoEnglishinthe sameway,theyoccur inquitedistinctdiscourse environments.Specifically,sentence(la)with theparticlemahpre-sents Nini as newinformation,whereas theparticleteh in sentence(lb)im-pliesthat Nini isgiveninformation. In(ic),theparticle teaidentifies Niniasknown information that isnotrecoverable from thelinguisticorextralinguisticcontext.Finally,in sentence(ld),noconstituent ishighlighted byaparticle.Suchsentencestypicallyoccur inextendednarrativesequencesthatlackpotentially confusing topic shifts,becausethey sequentiallyfollow asingleprotagonist.Inthefollowingsections Ishalldiscuss and illustrate the use ofeach of these threeparticles.