Topic and Focus in Sundanese

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Trustees of Indiana UniversityAnthropological Linguistics

Topic and Focus in SundaneseAuthor(s): Franz Mller-GotamaSource: Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 117-132Published by: The Trustees of Indiana University on behalf of Anthropological LinguisticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028445Accessed: 25/01/2009 22:35

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Topic and Focus in Sundanese

FRANZMQiLALER-GOTAMA

California State University, Fullerton

Abstract. This paper focuses on the grammatical treatment of information

in Sundanese. Using data from published sources as well as from elicitedexamples, I show that Sundanese employs three particles, mah, teh, and tea,for marking new, given, and reintroduced information, respectively. In ques-tion-answer sequences, teh appears in the question, marking the setting of thequestion, while mah appears in the answer, where it marks the new infor-mation provided. While these three particles serve the single function ofmarking pragmatic roles, they are quite different in their syntactic behaviorand text distribution. Specifically, mah and teh occur mmediately to the rightof any maximal phrase, while tea appears as a determiner.

1. Introduction. Sundanese is the major language in the Indonesian pro-vince of West Java. As a subject of linguistic investigation, it has been neg-lected as linguists have focused their interests on its neighbors, Javanese andIndonesian, both of which are closely related and share many basic typologicalproperties with Sundanese. Sundanese was first described by the Dutch lin-

guist Sierk Coolsma, who published a grammar (1873) and a dictionary (1913).Modern linguistic work was pioneered by R. H. Robins in a series of articles(1953a, 1953b, 1957, 1959, 1965, 1968), which explore basic phonological and

morphological properties of the language from a structuralist perspective.

More recently, Hardjadibrata (1985) has produced a tagmemic grammar, whileWessing (1976) has studied pluralization. Linguistic work published in In-donesia generally concentrates on morphology; Djajasudarma Idat (1986), inparticular, has provided an outstanding study of inchoative particles in Sun-danese.

The particles mah, teh, and tea have received only cursory discussion inthe literature. Hardjadibrata (1985:33) distinguishes them from other types ofparticles, listing them as one group among "markers of emphasis" and as"phrase markers," but he provides no discussion or examples. In this article I

intend to show that these three particles serve to delineate the informationstructure of a text. The particle mah is shown to be a focus marker introducingnew1 or thematized information, while teh is a marker of known information,and tea indicates that a previously mentioned participant is being reintro-duced into the discourse. Syntactically, mah and teh adjoin to the right of anymaximal constituent,2 while tea behaves like a special kind of determiner.

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118 ANTHROPOLOGICAL INGUISTICS 38 No. 1

The data for this study come from various types of texts, including thenovel Paeh di Popotongan (Hardjadibrata 1932), the weeklies Giwangkara and

Mangle, a series of readers entitled Piwulang Basa (Sumarsono and Fatur-ohman 1988) and a collection of children's stories entitled Warna-WarnaKaulinan (Sumarna 1986). Additional data were provided by Sundanese lan-

guage consultants.

2. Functional considerations. The unique distributions of mah, teh, andtea cannot be established within individual sentences. All three occur inter-

changeably in many of the same syntactic environments, as shown in ex-amples (la)-(lc), where each follows the same noun phrase. Use of these par-ticles also seems to be

syntactically "optional,"in the sense that a sentence in-

cluding none of them, such as (ld), will still be well formed.

(la) Si Nini mah digawe di kantor.PN Nini mah work in office'Nini works in an office.'

(lb) Si Nini teh digawe di kantor.PN Nini teh work in office'Nini works in an office.'

(ic) Si Nini tea digawe di kantor.PN Nini tea work in office'Nini works in an office.'

(ld) Si Nini digawe di kantor.PN Nini work in office

'Nini works in an office.'

When the analytical domain is extended beyond the sentence, the dis-tinctive functions of these particles begin to emerge. While sentences (la)-(ld)are all translated into English in the same way, they occur in quite distinctdiscourse environments. Specifically, sentence (la) with the particle mah pre-sents Nini as new information, whereas the particle teh in sentence (lb) im-plies that Nini is given information. In (ic), the particle tea identifies Nini asknown information that is not recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguisticcontext. Finally, in sentence (ld), no constituent is highlighted by a particle.Such sentences typically occur in extended narrative sequences that lackpotentially confusing topic shifts, because they sequentially follow a single

protagonist. In the following sections I shall discuss and illustrate the use ofeach of these three particles.


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1996 FRANZMOLLER-GOTAMA 119

2.1. teh marking old information. Following Chafe (1976:30), a referentcounts as "given" (or "old") information if the speaker assumes it to be pre-

sent in the addressee's consciousness at the moment of speaking. The particleteh marks such given information, irrespective of whether it is known becauseof prior mention or because of the extralinguistic context. Examples (2a) and

(2b) provide an instance of "givenness" due to prior mention: the phraseGBPP taun 1986 is marked with the particle teh in sentence (2b) following itsintroduction in the preceding sentence (2a).

(2a) Dupi anu diangge padoman nyusunna nyaeta GBPP taunfor REL PASS-take guide compile-NOM is curriculum year

1986.1986

'What was taken as a guide by the editors is the curriculum of 1986.' (Sumarsonoand Faturohman 1988:5)

(2b) Sakumaha anu parantos kauninga, GBPP taun 1986 teh tiasaas well as REL already known curriculum year 1986 teh can

disebat hasil revisi GBPP saheulaeunana.PASS-mention success revision curriculum earlier

'As is also already well known, the 1986 curriculum can be said to be the result of

earlier revisions.' (Sumarsono and Faturohman 1988:5)

In example (3) we have a clear instance where a teh-marked phrase can

not possibly be known from the linguistic context since it occurs as the openingstatement of the foreword to a book: the very first phrase is leu buku PiwulangBasa 'this book entitled Language Instruction', and is marked with teh. The

givenness of this phrase is unproblematic from the extralinguistic context,however, since any reader of the passage will be holding the book in hand.

(3) leu buku Piwulang Basa teh husus kanggo ngadeudeulthis book Study Language teh special for assist

pangajaran basa Sunda di SD [Sekolah Dasar].teaching/NOM language Sundanese in primary school

'This book Language Study is specially for assisting the teaching of the Sundaneselanguage in primary school.' (Sumarsono and Faturohman 1988:5)

Givenness hinges on the information status of the referent, rather than on

the particular wording used to evoke that referent. For instance, when a

speaker uses a descriptive noun phrase at first mention of a referent, and thena pronoun as the second mention of the same referent, this referent counts as

given in the second mention despite the fact that the pronominal noun phraseis different in form from the initially used descriptive noun phrase. This is


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1996 FRANZMULLER-GOTAMA 121

(7) Anu dalapan welas unit teh kandel teuing upami disabukukeunREL eight teen unit teh thick too so:that PASS-one-book-TRAN

mah.mah

'The eighteen chapters were too thick to be made into one book.' (Sumarsono andFaturohman 1988:7)

(8) Upami keur usum panen mah sok ka Karawang.for example PROG season rice mah often to Karawang'For example, during the rice harvest season he often went to Karawang.'

(Hardjakusuma 1988[1932]:22)

As a marker of new information, mah is typically associated with the firstmention of a referent and frequently sets up the main discourse topic at theoutset of a text, as in examples (9) and (10).4

(9) Pakaleng-kaleng Agung mah kaulinan barudak awewe nu masihhold hands noble mah game child-PL female REL still

keneh laleutik.still small-PL

'Nobly Holding Hands is a game for girls who are still small.' (Sumarna 1986:33)

(10) Gugunungan mah tempatna di buruan anu aya taneuh ngebulGugunungan mah place-DEF in yard REL exist dirt dusty

lamun usum halodo.example season dry

'Gugunungan s a place in the yard where there is dusty dirt, for example in the dryseason.' (Sumarna 1986:46)

The initial mention of a discourse topic constitutes new information, except inexamples like (3) above where the discourse topic leu buku Piwulang Basa teh'this book entitled Language Study' was "given" information because of the

extralinguistic context. Example (9) begins a story about the Pakaleng-kalengAgung game, while (10) opens a story on the Gugunungan game. Both of thesemah-marked phrases represent new information that establishes the principaldiscourse topic of the text that follows.

When mah occurs in the body of a text (i.e., when it does not introduce the

principal discourse topic), it frequently establishes a new, local discourse topic,or signals a transition to a new perspective or a change of scene. This function

accounts for the preponderance of temporal or locative phrases associated withthe particle mah, seen, for instance, in example (5) which represents a majorturning point in a narrative. Up to this moment, a children's war game hadbeen played out on land, and Boyek's "troops" had taken a beating. This sen-


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tence shifts the action to a new battleground, with new possibilities for bothBoyek's troops and the storyteller. A parallel analysis can be given for the

phrase, isukan mah 'tomorrow', in example (11), where the perspective of thespeaker shifts from what is happening now to what will happen the next day.

(11) Isukan mah rek nyoba-nyoba deui neang ka ditu.tomorrow mah will try-try again visit to there

'Tomorrow, will try again to go there.' (Abdurrahman 1989:7)

Just as the phrase isukan mah in sentence (11) created a temporal frame forits predicate, in sentence (12), the locative phrase di ditu mah 'over there'establishes a frame of reference in which the

predicate followingholds.

(12) Di ditu mah asa teu aya jelema ngaran Marsaip.In there mah seem not exist person named Marsaip'Over there, there does not seem to be a person named Marsaip.'

(Hardjakusuma 1988[1932]:19)

In example (13), the phrase silaing mah 'as for you' establishes a new focusof attention for the speaker: with this phrase, the speaker turns from addres-sing the other children to addressing Ya, singling him out as his new discoursetopic.

(13) Silaing mah, Ya ditugaskeun jadi mata-mata tehyou mah Ya PASS-duty-TRAN become spy teh

belegug pisan.disrespectful very

'As for you, Ya, being made a spy is very disrespectful.' (Sumarna 1986:10)

In contrast, the fact that Ya had worked as a spy had become evident in thecourse of the children's war game and was thus known to all; consequentlythe verb phrase ditugaskeun jadi mata-mata teh 'being made a spy is verydisrespectful' is marked with teh.

The marking of saenya-enyana 'truthfully' with mah in example (4) mayat first seem surprising in that the principal new information appears to bethe subject's Sundanese identity, leading us to expect something like *Saen-ya-enyana anjeunna teh urang Sunda mah. The context in which this sen-tence occurs, however, makes it clear that what is being highlighted is the

contrast between actual identity and previous appearance. By his physio-gnomy, dress, and behavior, the subject appeared to be Ambonese, an impres-sion that he actively sought to promote. The truth of his being Sundanese istherefore unexpected and a source of surprise, and it is this stark contrast


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between truth and appearance that is singled out by marking saenya-enya 'intruth' with mah, rather than urang Sunda.

The functions of the particle mah include providing contrastive focus, thatis, the contrastive presentation of a set of alternatives (K6nig 1991:32), whichin languages like Korean or Japanese is served by a topic marker. This con-trastive use of mah is illustrated by example (14), in which the phrases mark-ed by mah are underlined.

(14) Galah Bandung mah nu maenna cukup ku tiluan, sedengkeunGalah Bandung mah REL play-DEF enough by three-NOM while

galah biasa mah paling saeutikna oge hudu aya dalapangalah normal mah most little also must exist eight

urangna.person

'As for the Bandung variety of galah, the ones who play are enough as a group ofthree [i.e., it requires only three players] while for the normal galah there mustat least be eight persons.

In summary, the underlying motivation behind the various uses of mahappears to be the presentation of information that is new or unpredictable.The particle mah can therefore be called a focus particle in the sense of Kdnig(1991), who discusses various converging senses of the term focus, includingfocus as marking new information, as highlighting, and as relating a set of al-ternatives. Despite the frequency with which new discourse topics are markedwith mah, it should again be emphasized that not all discourse topics are somarked, and that not all occurrences of mah introduce a discourse topic.

2.3. teh and mah in question-answer sequences. Comrie (1989:62-63)suggests that question-answer sequences are especially useful for illustrating

presentation of new and given information: a question seeks certain new infor-mation about a given topic that the questioner and his addressee share in com-mon; the answer then provides this requested new information. Based on ourprevious discussion, we would predict that teh marks the shared informationin the question while mah occurs in the answer, where it highlights the newinformation provided.

While the use of these particles is syntactically optional in questions, as it

is in all sentence types, this prediction is indeed borne out by the data. When

they occur in question-answer sequences, teh is associated with the shared in-formation of the question, whereas mah marks the constituent that provides

the requested new information of the answer. This is illustrated in examples(15) and (16). It is not possible to use mah in place of teh, or vice versa, in anyof these cases.


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124 ANTHROPOLOGICALINGUISTICS 38 No. 1

(15) Q: Eusina buku eta teh naha kataji?content-POss book that teh Q interesting'Is (the content of) that book interesting?'

A: Komo bae kataji mah.above all interesting mah

'Very interesting.'

(16) Q: Anu indit ka pasar teh saha?REL go to market teh who'Who s (the one) going to the market?'

A: Nu indit ka pasar Dadas mah.

REL go to market Dadas mah'The one who is going to the market is Dadas.'

In other words, the function of teh is to identify the "setting" (to use the termof Mathesius 1939, cited in Bossong 1989:28) to which the question refers, i.e.,that information which the speaker assumes to be known or shared by thehearer. Mah marks the core new information provided in the answer. In thissense, teh could be termed a prototypical topic marker and mah a prototypicalfocus marker.

2.4. tea marking reintroduced information. Compared to either mah orteh, the particle tea has a much lower text frequency. It occurs with thehighest frequency in texts containing frequent cross-references to prior partici-pants. Nevertheless, it is not unusual for several paragraphs to go by withoutany occurrence of tea in every text type reviewed for this study, and in fact,many texts do not contain tea at all. This relatively low frequency of tea indi-cates a more specialized function than for either mah or teh.

Chafe (1976:32) points out that "givenness" is exceedingly transitory. Asa result, a referent can be marked with teh for only as long as it is clearlyknown from context or if it has been mentioned recently. At the same time, areferent that is not entirely new does not warrant marking with mah either.Sundanese provides the speaker with the option of using tea to mark informa-tion that is known but not immediately recoverable from context or from pre-ceding text. The function of tea, thus, mirrors Halliday's notion of "recover-ability" which, according to Chafe (1976:32), characterizes the "grey area"between givenness and newness. In Sundanese discourse it fills the gap be-tween teh and mah. It reintroduces something previously given in the dis-

course, filling the functional gap between the new information marker mahand the old information marker teh. Examples (17)-(19) illustrate how tea isused, with phrases marked by tea underlined.5


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(17) Nu opatan tea kudu bareng pindah tempat cicingna.REL four-NOM tea must together move place quietly'The four of them must go to the next place together quietly.' (Sumarna 1986:61)

In example (17), the group of four children had been mentioned in the begin-ning of the preceding paragraph, but a discussion of the activities of variouschildren intervened before the group was mentioned again two sentences intothe second paragraph. While the givenness of the group as a referent had laps-ed due to the intervening discussion, having been mentioned, it is not new in-

formation; hence nu opatan 'the four of them' is marked with tea. Similarly,example (18) is from a magazine story on space flight. The author had men-tioned the

spaceshuttle Columbia in the preceding paragraph; when it is rein-

troduced five sentences later, it is marked with tea.

(18) Kapal samodel Columbia tea tetela bisa dipake sababarahaship one-model Columbia tea evident can PASS-take several

kali.time

'Ships of the same model as Columbia evidently can be used several times.

(Mangl6 785, 7 May 1981:21)

Example (19) is interesting because the referent of tea is formally ambiguouswhen the sentence is considered in isolation.

(19) Barang direret ku Praja, eta anu ngomong kitu teh nyawhen PASS-glance by Praja that REL talk like that teh well

eta awewe anu keur neangan jelema ngaran Marsaip tea.that woman REL PROG search person named Marsaip tea

'When Praja glanced (sideways), the one who had talked in that manner wasthe woman who had been searching for the man called Marsaip.' Hardjakusuma

1988[1932]:21)

The potential ambiguity in (19) arises from the fact that, formally, tea couldmark the noun phrase jelema ngaran Marsaip 'the man called Marsaip' imme-diately to its left, or it could mark the larger phrase awewe anu keur neanganjelema ngaran Marsaip 'the woman who was looking for the man calledMarsaip'. In fact, in the text from which this example is taken, both referentshad previous mention. But that (19) is not ambiguous in its context indicatesthe efficiency of the tea marking: the woman was mentioned within the

preceding two sentences and was, in fact, the one who spoke in the immed-iately preceding sentence. In context, her givenness is apparent, and it wouldbe inappropriate for her to be marked by tea. Consequently, the particle tea in

(19) refers unambiguously to the man.


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2.5. Sentences without teh, mah, or tea. The centrality of the pragmaticroles of givenness and newness accounts for the high text frequency of the par-

ticles teh and mah, particularly in passages where a number of participantsare involved. Still, there are many sentences without either teh, mah, or tea.Jackson observed the same fact for focus marking in Toba Batak and con-cluded that focus particles have a more specialized pragmatic function than

just marking unshared information since, presumably, all declarative sen-tences will contain some shared information to ensure continuity and somenew information to develop the topic further. For Jackson, this specializedpragmatic function of focus particles is their property to "relate the new orunshared information to the previous text in a fairly specific way" (1984:96;emphasis in original). Jackson's observation may be generalized to the Sun-danese particles: a Sundanese narrative that follows sequentially the actionsof a single protagonist may not include any occurrences of teh, mah, or tea.When, however, a text involves various, potentially confusing participants ordiscourse topic shifts, these particles may appear in nearly every sentence.

3. Structural considerations. In this section I will investigate the struc-tural characteristics of teh, mah, and tea. After briefly establishing the syn-tactic properties of mah and teh, I will concentrate on the syntax of tea, which

differs significantly from the other two particles. Specifically, we will see thatmah and teh have the same syntactic distribution, while the particle teashares the syntactic characteristics of determiners.

The syntactic distribution of mah and teh is unproblematic in that both oc-cur immediately to the right of any maximal constituent.6 We have seen theparticle mah immediately after a noun phrase in examples (6) and (13), after aprepositional phrase in (12), after an adverb in (4) and (11), after an adjectivephrase in (15), after a subordinate clause in (7), and after a verb phrase in (8).Likewise, we have seen the particle teh appearing immediately after a noun

phrase in (3), (5), and (15), and after a verb phrase in (13). In examples (20)-(23), which follow, and in which the phrase marked by the particle is underlin-ed, we see teh appearing after a prepositional phase in (20), after an adverb in(21), after a subordinate clause in (22), and, again, after a verb phrase in (23).

(20) Kuli-kuli di dinya teh kacida reana.kuli-kuli in here teh very many-3'There are very many kulis here.' (Hardjakusuma 1988[1932]:23)

(21) Harita teh basa salakina balik usaha,...right then teh when husband-3 return business

'Right then when her husband returned from work,....' (Abdurrahman 1989:6)


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1996 FRANZ MOLLER-GOTAMA 127

(22) Nyongsrong we mun geus gede teh rek daptar ka Akademireally want if if already big teh will list to academy

Angkatan Laut.lift-NOM sea

'I really wanted to enlist in the navy academy when I was grown up.' (Santosa1989:10)

(23) Ditanva teh malik nanya "Indonesia nu mana?"PASS-ask teh return ask Indonesia REL where

'Having just been asked a question, she answers by asking "Which Indonesia?"'(Mangle 1307, 11 July 1991:50)

The particles mah and teh thus attach immediately to the right of any maxi-mal constituent. Sentences like (24a) and (24b), in which they occur after ademonstrative, are especially significant because they establish that mah andteh may occur after the noun phrase final determiner.

(24a) Duit eta mah sawareh keur anjeun.money that mah one-part for you'Part of that money is for you.

(24b) Duit eta teh sawareh keur anjeun.money that teh one-part for you'Part of that money is for you.

Since it is not permissible in Sundanese for two determiners to modify thesame head noun, the grammaticalness of (24a) and (24b) indicates that what-ever mah and teh are, they are not determiners. In contrast, the correspondingform using tea, *duit eta tea, is not permissible, indicating that in this regardat least, tea acts like a determiner. Tea and mah can also cooccur, as in ex-

ample (25), where the marked noun phrase is underlined.

(25) Moal boa nu rek mayar hutang tea mah.definitely REL want pay debt tea mah

'Definitely (someone) who wants to pay that debt.' (Abdurrahman 1989:7)

Here tea occupies the noun phrase determiner position, usually reserved fordemonstratives, and is followed by mah.7 Forms in which tea does not mark anoun phrase, in which mah precedes tea, or in which teh cooccurs with eithermah or tea, are not permissible.8 In example (26), where tea follows the prepo-

sitional phrase di tengah kalang, tea is properly interpreted as marking thePP-internal noun phrase kalang.


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(26) Ucingna nangtung dina titik potong di tengah kalang tea.cat-DEF stand inside point cut in middle circle tea'The cat stands at the intersection in the middle of the (previously mentioned)

circle.' (Sumarna 1986:61)

Although tea occupies the noun phrase final determiner position, it differsfrom the demonstratives ieu 'this', eta 'that (close by)' and itu 'that (fartheraway)', which occupy this position elsewhere, in several ways. First, tea canonly appear in the final determiner position, while the true demonstrativescan also occupy an alternative initial determiner position, appearing before thenoun modified. Consider the underlined noun phrase in example (27).

(27) Kitu deui iraha-irahana leu serat dipidamel.like that again when this letter PASS-CAUS-work'It was that way again when this letter was composed.'

The noun phrase ieu serat 'this letter' could also have been rendered as seratieu, with a final determiner.

Secondly, tea differs from the true demonstratives insofar as native speak-ers of Sundanese, including linguists like Hardjadibrata (1985:26) and Djaja-sudarma Idat (1991:103), consistently identify the three demonstratives as adistinct group and differentiate them from members of other word classes.Including tea among the demonstratives is, therefore, contrary to the intui-tions and linguistic analyses of Sundanese native speakers.

Thirdly, tea (as well as teh and mah) differs from the demonstratives

semantically. Whereas the demonstratives ieu, eta, and itu are spatial deictics,tea is not; its only function is to mark the pragmatic role of reintroduced in-formation. For example, the Indonesian demonstrative itu 'that' in a phraselike buku itu 'that book' can be used as a spatial deictic, literally pointing atthe book, or as a marker of given information, referring back to a book thatwas mentioned previously. In Sundanese, however, this ambiguity of Indo-nesian buku itu (which likewise exists in its English equivalent that book) canbe resolved by using either a demonstrative, which may be deictic (cf. buku eta'that book'), or a particle (cf. buku teh 'the book [given]'), or buku tea 'the book(previously given)', which is unambiguously a pragmatic role marker.

When the particles teh and tea occur in examples given in the writings ofRobins, Hardjadibrata, and Djajasudarma Idat, they are sometimes glossed as'that' (Indonesian itu).9 Nevertheless, this apparent similarity with a demon-strative is misleading, as should be clear by now from the previous discussion.

Because these authors work with isolated sentences, the particles mah, teh,and tea, occur only very rarely in their examples. Their glossing teh and tea as'that' may be explained by our finding that these particles mark old informa-tion, and that marking of old information is often achieved in languages like


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English and Indonesian by using a demonstrative. In other words, the glossingof teh and tea as 'that' results from the fact that demonstratives in English and

Indonesian languages have the dual functions of marking spatial deixis andpragmatic roles, functions that are served by different markers in Sundanese:the demonstratives ieu 'this', eta 'that (close by)', and itu 'that (farther away)'are deictics, while the particles mah, teh, and tea exclusively mark the prag-matic roles of new, given, and reintroduced information.

4. Concluding remarks. This paper has shown that Sundanese overtlymarks pragmatic roles using the three particles mah, teh, and tea. The particlemah marks a constituent as new, teh as given, and tea as recoverable infor-mation.

Syntactically,however, these three

particlesbehave differently from

one another: The particles mah and teh occur immediately to the right of anymaximal constituent and can, consequently, unproblematically cooccur with ademonstrative in the noun phrase-final position. The particle tea, on the other

hand, is structurally a determiner occupying the noun phrase-final determiner

position; it, therefore, cannot cooccur with a demonstrative. Tea differs fromthe demonstratives both syntactically and semantically, causing native speak-ers of Sundanese, including native speaker linguists, to group it separately.

Notes

Acknowledgements. An earlier version of this paper was read at the Second AnnualMeeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society at the University of Arizona,Tempe, 1992. I would like to thank the participants in that conference as well as R. H.Robins and the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments andsuggestions. I am indebted to Professor Fatimah Djajasudarma Idat for introducing meto to her work on Sundanese and to my language consultants, Mr. Dadan Suparmanand Mr. Saeful Bahri, without whom this project would not have been possible. Myresearch in Indonesia was supported by a General Faculty Grant from the CaliforniaState University Fullerton Foundation.

Abbreviations. The following abbreviations are used: 3 = third person marker; CAUS

= causative; DEF = definite; DET = determiner; EXCL = exclamation; NOM = nominalizer;PASS = passive; PL = plural; PN = personal name marker; POSS = possessive; PP = preposi-tional phrase; PROG = progressive; Q = question marker; REL = relative marker; TRAN =transitive.

Orthography. Sundanese orthography follows the conventions for Standard Indo-nesian, i.e., c = /5/, j = /j/, sy = //, ny = /ii/, ng = /1j/. A mid-high unrounded backvowel, which does not occur in Indonesian, is represented by eu.

1. In the sense that the information s presented as new in the particular discoursecontext in which it is introduced (Chafe 1976). See also the discussion in section 2.2.

2. The term maximal constituent is used here to refer to clause-level participants,including all arguments and obliques; i.e., it is intended to exclude phrases that are

themselves embedded in a larger phrase, such as a PP inside of a noun phrase (e.g.,from Jakarta in the phrase my friend from Jakarta).

3. One anonymous reviewer of this paper suggests that teh can be analyzed asmarking "aboutness"; owever, teh, mah, and tea can equally mark what the predicateis "about." For example, sentences (la) through (ld) are all equally "about" Nini,


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regardless of the choice of particle. Similarly, the following sentences are "about" ai'the water' (marked by tea) and Mimin (marked by mah), respectively.

(i) Cai tea diteundeun kana meja.water tea PASS-put to table'The water was put on the table.' (Amilia 1981:5)

(ii) Mimin mah rungah-ringeuh da teu wawuh ka eta awewe teh.Mimin mah stunned because not know to that woman teh.

'Mimin was stunned because she did not know that woman.' (Abdurrahman 1989:7)

This second example, which is from Sofwan Abdurrachman's hort story Sagara BedahNa Dada (1989), is particularly instructive since the woman referred to in the finalphrase, eta awewe teh, was the principal actor in the scene just preceding this sentence,and so is known to the reader; at the same time, this sentence is clearly "about" Mimin,with eta awewe teh being part of the predicate.

4. The term topic has acquired in many distinct senses in the linguistic literature.I consistently use the term discourse topic for the "aboutness" elationship here in orderto differentiate it from other common definitions.

5. I am endebted to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting some of the formula-tions in this paragraph.

6. As outlined in note 2, the term maximal constituent refers to all clause-level par-ticipants.

7. Noun phrases include those phrases headed by a noun as well as headlessrelative clauses. While the latter lack an overt head noun, they have the same syntactic

distribution as other noun phrases, can occur with a final determiner or with tea, as inexample (17), and have the same formal characteristics as ordinary relative clausesexcept for the lack of an overt head noun. A phrase like nu datang eta 'the one who hadcome' is consequently a noun phrase just as awewe nu datang eta 'the woman who hadcome' is.

8. At present, the function of the tea mah combination is still unclear to me. Ananonymous reviewer of this paper notes that, possibly tea could refer to hutang 'debt'whereas mah could refer to the whole phrase. On the face of it, this suggestion appearsquite plausible; however, it suggests that the larger phrase could potentially be markedwith either mah or teh since the pragmatic role of this larger phrase is in principleindependent of that of the embedded phrase hutang. Unfortunately, Sundanese lan-

guage consultants reject any tea teh combination, and tea mah is the only combinationthat occurs in Sundanese texts, suggesting that we are dealing with a frozen col-location.

9. Elsewhere they are not translated at all.

References

Abdurrachman, Sofwan1989 Sagara Bedah Na Dada. Mangle 1197 (18 May):6-8.

Amilia, Aam1981 Jaruji.

Mangl6785 (7 May):4-6.

Bossong, Georg1989 Morphemic Marking of Topic and Focus. Belgian Journal of Linguistics

4:27-51.Chafe, Wallace L.

1976 Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of


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1996 FRANZ MOLLER-GOTAMA 131

View. In Subject and Topic, edited by Charles N. Li, 25-55. New York:Academic Press.

Comrie, Bernard1989 Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. 2d edition. Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press.Coolsma, Sierk

1873 Handleiding bij de beoefening der Sundaneesche taal. Batavia: Van Dorp.1913 Sundaneesch-Hollandsch woordenboek. Leiden: Sijthoff.

Djajasudarma Idat, Fatimah1986 Kecap anteuran Bahasa Sunda. Satu kajian semantik dan struktur [Co-

words in Sundanese: A Semantic and Structural Study]. Ph.D. diss., Uni-versitas Indonesia.

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Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan1991 Nu Tatamba. Mangle 1307 (11 July):28-29.

Hardjadibrata, R. R.1985 Sundanese: A Syntactical Analysis. Pacific Linguistics, D-65. Canberra:

Australian National University, Department of Linguistics.Hardjakusuma, M. K.

1988[1932] Paeh di Popotongan. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.Jackson, Catherine A.

1984 Focus Particles in Toba Batak. In Studies in the Structure of Toba Batak,edited by Paul Schachter, 80-99. UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics5. Los Angeles: UCLA Department of Linguistics.

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Mangle1981 Columbia: Beus Piknik ka Jomantara. Mangle 785 (7 May):20-21.

Mathesius, Vilem1939 O tak zvanem aktualnim 61enenim vety. Slovo a Slovesnost 5:171-74.

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the School of Oriental and African Studies 15:138-45.1957 Vowel Nasality in Sundanese. Studies in Linguistic Analysis 87-103. Ox-

ford: Basil Blackwell.1959 Nominal and Verbal Derivation in Sundanese. Lingua 8:337-69.1965 Some Typological Observations on Sundanese Morphology. Lingua 15:

435-50.1968 Basic Sentence Structures in Sundanese. Lingua 21:351-58.

Rosala, E. Deddy1989 Mairan Hadi Aks. Mangle 1197 (18 May):5.

Santosa, Dudi

1989 Mochamad Yusuf. Mangle 1197 (18 May):lO-13.Sumarna, Akub1986 Warna-warna Kaulinan. Bandung: Tarate.

Sumarsono, Tatang and Taufik Faturohman1988 Piwulang Basa. Pengajaran Basa Sunda Pikeun Murid SD (24 volumes).

Bandung: Geger Sunten.


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Wessing, Robert1976 Inchoative Nouns in Sundanese. Anthropological Linguistics 18:341-48.

Documents

Topic and Focus in Sundanese