Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
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...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
Rotinese parallelism is an extensively researched feature from an anthropological perspective. This thesis, however, is a research from a linguistic perspective. Linguistic features of Rotinese...Show moreRotinese parallelism is an extensively researched feature from an anthropological perspective. This thesis, however, is a research from a linguistic perspective. Linguistic features of Rotinese parallelism are described on multiple levels. The structure of the parallels is described by means of analysis of the parallels, and statistical data gained from it. The grammatical, semantic and lexical parallelism is described by means of analysis of the relation between the words in a word pair, or the lines in a parallel. Most features of Rotinese parallelism agree with the parallelism in other Central-Eastern Indonesian languages. In contrary to these languages, Rotinese parallelism shows no strict order in lexical parallel pairs. Some parallel pairs do show a strict order, they seem to be pairs denoting strong cultural constructs. In conclusion, this thesis has been the first linguistic exploration of Rotinese parallelism. First steps are taken into understanding its extensive use and richness of features.Show less