Productivity of morphological patterns and social domain analysis in Papuan Malay

Abstract

This paper describes a multifaceted approach, including several distinct factors, to examining the productivity of morphological patterns in Papuan Malay, a non-standard variety of Malay, spoken in coastal West Papua. More specifically, the paper discusses the question of how the degree of productivity of affixation can be established in diglossic situations where the target language is the LOW variety which experiences interference from a closely related HIGH variety. This applies to Papuan Malay, which has a great deal of language contact with Indonesian, the official language in the area, and can be exemplified with prefix BER‘VBLZ’. This approach is offered as a case study for taking into account both language internal and external factors when examining the productivity of morphological patterns in contexts where more traditional approaches are less likely to provide reliable data. Following an introduction to the topic, nine language internal and external factors are described. These factors were employed to examine to what degree Papuan Malay speakers use prefix BER‘VBLZ’ to create new words. These more general remarks are followed by a discussion of prefix BER‘VBLZ’ as it is used in Papuan Malay. The paper closes with a summary and conclusions. Show more