“Non-productive” Infixes in Indonesian
Abstract
Excerpt
“Non-productive” infixes in IN do not seem to have attracted the attention they deserve from comparatists. In two of his monographs, Brandstetter speaks of the fusion of formative elements with roots, like -ĕr-, -ĕl-, -um- and -in-1 (-um- and -in- are excluded in this paper) in the formation of stems, and of -ar- or -al- as formatives producing active verbs in ToB.2 Adriani and Dunnebier treat quite in detail in Tnt and Bol-Mong respectively infixes similar to the ones under study, and Kern in his ‘Wortels en Grondwoorden’ covers a wide field from the comparative point of view. As much as I can ascertain there has been no attempt so far to postulate proto-forms of non-productive infixes.
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The purpose of this paper is to look for additional evidence in IN which may bolster the validity of Dempwolff’s “estarrte Infixe”, and construct proto-forms accordingly. The principal sources are Dempwolff’s Austronesisches Wörterveszeichnis from which are selected PAN forms with infixed reflexes in at least one IN language and with cognates in other languages, and on Philippine languages my unpublished manuscript on a comparative Philippine word-list of about 2,500 items in 23 languages (which is still in the process of revision and expansion), supplemented by printed works. The coverage is rather uneven, some printed works yielding more cognates and others much less.
