Reordering in Kupang Malay Noun Phrase

Abstract

Kupang Malay noun phrases (NP) have a unique structure. The speakers often reorder the phrases to convey a particular meaning. However, the reordering of the words in the noun phrase also has boundaries. Due to the problem, this study investigated the type of Kupang NP, its reordering pattern, its effect on the semantic content, grammatical function, and constraints of the NP reordering. This research employed Fieldworks lexical explorer (Flex) built up by SIL teams to analyze the data. The data was gathered from the online Kupang Malay Bible website. Sixty data were chosen from four out of twenty-eight books within the bible. The books are called carita mula-mula (Old Testament), Mathew, Mark, and Luke. The data consist of 30 NPs with pre-modifiers and 30 NPs constructed by post-modifiers. The result shows that pre-modifiers noun phrases undergo more reordering because they are triggered by the constituents than post-modifiers noun phrases. Most word shift does not affect a noun phrase's meaning and grammatical function.