The Indonesian prefixes PE- and PEN-: A study in productivity and allomorphy

Abstract

This study examines two nominalizing prefixes in Indonesian: PE-and PEN-, which derive nouns from verbs with a range of meanings similar to that found in-er suffix in English. The prefix PE-is form-invariant, whereas PEN-has several nasal allomorphs. Given their similarity in form and function, the question arises of whether PE-and PEN-are allomorphs. We conducted a corpus-based analysis of their productivity, using the written Indonesian corpus in the Leipzig Corpora Collection. In this corpus, PENis apparently more productive than PE-. Interestingly, the frequency of words with PEN-correlates significantly with the productivity of the corresponding base verbs. In addition, PENis more integrated into the verbal system; verbs that have PEN-are part of larger verb families. PEN-attaches almost exclusively to verbs and creates nouns denoting agents and instruments. By contrast, PE-creates nouns denoting agents and patients and attaches not only to verbs but also to nouns and adjectives. For derived words with PE-, there is no significant correlation between the frequency of the nominalization and the frequency of its base. PE-also does not participate in the linearity of the productivity of the allomorphs of base and derived words that characterizes PEN-. Words with PE-are also more often input to further reduplication and inflectional variants than is the case for PEN-. This corpus-based research thus illustrates that affixes can have different qualitative and quantitative properties, although at first blush they look like allomorphs. Our analyses justify their treatment in the Indonesian literature as separate prefixes.

The Addition of Indonesian Prefixes meN- and di- to English Bases: A Corpus-based Study

“…The files can be accessed from https://wortschatz.unileipzig.de/en/downloa d/Indonesian#ind_mixed_2013. This corpora has been widely utilized by fellow researchers on various Indonesian morphology issues, which elicits importance of Leipzig Corpora Collection (henceforth LCC) within the academia (see more Choi, 2019;Denistia, 2019;Denistia & Baayen, 2019;Rajeg et al, 2019Rajeg et al, , 2020Rajeg & Rajeg, 2017).…”

“…Through the use of Web-based corpus, one can obtain an extensive data organized from diverse sources of various domains as well. In terms of analyzing the corpus, Denistia and Baayen (2019) use MorphInd, a morphological analyzer specifically made for the Indonesian language, but because this study focuses on the combination of Indonesian and English, the corpus was then analyzed using AntConc, a free software corpus analysis toolkit for concordance and text analysis. The use of AntConc is very essential in this study as its Concordancer tool helps to display several data examples that a researcher wants to look for as it is quick and efficient to use (Anthony, 2005).…”

“…Prefix meN-and its passive counterpart dican also be optionally supplemented with verb-forming suffixes such as -kan and -i which can affect the semantic roles of a word once either suffix is added (Arka & Yannuar, 2016;Denistia & Baayen, 2019;Sneddon, 2010). The mention of the suffixes -kan and -i is very important in this study as it was identified in this study's database that there are indeed additional affixes that emphasize the semantic roles of the combinations of English bases and Indonesian prefixes meN-and di-.…”

“…Unlike ber-and di-, N-in meN-alongside peN-, and peN-…-an represents a sound change depending on the first sound of the base, leading to a phenomenon of nasal allomorphy (Denistia & Baayen, 2019;Sneddon, 2010;Sukarno, 2017). Therefore, to quote Denistia and Bayen (2019, p. 387) If it is followed by a voiceless stop sound (s) and they occur in different morphemes…”

Comparing the productivity of Estonian deverbal suffixes -mine, -us, and -ja in five registers: A quantitative usage-based approach

“…The property of -ja to express multiple semantic roles (e.g. that of an agent, experiencer, stimulus, instrument or even a theme) is a cross-linguistically attested phenomenon with agent noun suffixes (see Booij & Lieber 2004, Denistia & Baayen 2019.…”