Leiden University Student Repository

Mourik, Bettina (2022)

Grammar of Lexical Parallelism: Lexical Parallelism in Southeast Asia

Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)

In this thesis lexical parallelism in Southeast Asia is researched, with a main focus on Rotinese and Fataluku, with additional analyses from Leti and Kambera. In this thesis two hypotheses were tested: differences in the positioning of the ‘cultural dominant term’, and the related hypothesis where the combination of words, and their positioning, are dictated by culture. As the research showed, there are strong tendencies towards orderings in which the culturally dominant term always stands in the same position. This means that the two slots within a lexical parallel are grammatical slots, where the one slot has more power than the other, and thus occupies the word which has most power in the culture. The other hypothesis showed that languages differ in the position in which the culturally most dominant term is placed. For Leti and Rotinese, this is the first position, therefore, those languages are called P1-Languages. However, Kambera and Fataluku place the culturally most...Show moreIn this thesis lexical parallelism in Southeast Asia is researched, with a main focus on Rotinese and Fataluku, with additional analyses from Leti and Kambera. In this thesis two hypotheses were tested: differences in the positioning of the ‘cultural dominant term’, and the related hypothesis where the combination of words, and their positioning, are dictated by culture. As the research showed, there are strong tendencies towards orderings in which the culturally dominant term always stands in the same position. This means that the two slots within a lexical parallel are grammatical slots, where the one slot has more power than the other, and thus occupies the word which has most power in the culture. The other hypothesis showed that languages differ in the position in which the culturally most dominant term is placed. For Leti and Rotinese, this is the first position, therefore, those languages are called P1-Languages. However, Kambera and Fataluku place the culturally most important term in the second position and are therefore called P2-Languages.Show less

linguistics

ritual speech

oral tradition

parallelism

lexical parallelism

Author

Mourik, Bettina

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language Description

Supervisors

Engelenhoven, A.T.P.G van

ECTS Credits

30

Language

en