Divergent Varieties of Malay in Upstream Jambi

Timothy McKinnon, Yanti, Peter Cole, Gabriella Hermon, “Divergent Varieties of Malay in Upstream Jambi”, presented at Twelfth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, July 2-6, 2012, and 16th International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics, Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, June 22-24, 2012.


DESCRIPTIONS OF the Malay spoken in the Batanghari watershed (Jambi, Sumatra) have primarily focused on varieties spoken in two geographic regions which are quite distant from one another: Jambi City and its vicinity (Tadmor & Yanti (2005, 2006); Cole et.al (2010); Yanti and Raimy (2010); Yanti (2010)) and Kerinci, specifically in the direct vicinity of Sungai Penuh (Isman (1958); Prentice & Usman (1978); Steinhauer & Usman (1978); Usman (1988) Mckinnon (2011) inter alia). The Malay spoken in these two regions is not mutually intelligible and, as the works cited above demonstrate, the grammars of these varieties differ in very significant ways.

One of the unique characteristics of Kerinci is that, in core dialects, the majority of lexemes exhibit two or more morphological forms which differ in the phonological shape of their root-final syllable rime (1). These two forms exhibit distinct morphological and morphosyntactic functions.

This paper describes two previously undescribed Malay dialects which are geographically situated between Kerinci and Jambi City: Lempur Malay (LM) and Rantau Panjang (RP) Malay. These varieties also show an interesting mixture of the grammatical characteristics found in Jambi Malay and Kerinci. Lexemes show an alternation similar to that found in Kerinci (2); however, the distribution and function of the two alternating forms in LM and RP varieties is quite distinct from that found in Kerinci. To illustrate this point, Kerinci verbs typically appear in Form 1 in sentences like (3a) where no direct object is present. With a direct object, however, active verbs typically appear in Form 2 (3b). In LM and RP, however, transitive verbs typically appear in Form 1 regardless of whether the verb takes a direct object (4). Form 2 only occurs in some special environments, such as when the direct object of an active verb is topicalized (5).

In this paper we provide an initial report on the unique features of the divergent Malay varieties of Rantau Panjang and Lempur. Our discussion will focus specifically on the unique morphological properties of these varieties.[]

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