Semantics of Functional and Locative Relations in Rongga

Abstract

Many scholars have proposed a universal set of locative relations. Herskovits's comprehensive study of English locative relations found that locative concepts such as inclusion, support and contiguity, and coincidence are basic in English. Her findings offer support for strong Universal Conceptual Categories. On the other hand, Levinson et al.'s examination of locative relations of nine unrelated languages revealed that the basic concepts are attachments, superadjacency, full containment, subadjacency, and proximity which suggest Universal Tendencies rather than Universal Conceptual Categories. This study investigates how locative relations are encoded in Rongga and their implications for the universalism of locative relations. A standard elicitation technique was used.It appears that Rongga is unique in the priority it gives to the notion of functional relations over locative relations. Functional relations refer to the "natural" function between located and reference objects. Thus, when a natural function is present the relation is functional rather than spatial. Rongga uses the preposition one to refer to functional relations. However, when the natural relation is absent the relation becomes locative. Various prepositions such as zheta wewo/zheta tolo 'on', zheta wena 'over/above', zhale one 'inside', zhale wena/zhale lewu 'below/under' are used to express locative relations. In other words, instead of encoding the locative relationship based upon the locative concepts described by Herskovits and Levinson et al., Rongga emphasizes the importance of natural function between located and reference objects.

Adults' Representations of Balinese Universal Quantifiers

“…Instead, the language employs the absolute system. In systematic studies of Balinese spatial systems by Aryawibawa (2010) and Aryawibawa et al (2018, submitted), the results show that Balinese uses the absolute system dominantly.…”