This study examines two nominalizing prefixes in Indonesian: PE-and PEN-, which derive nouns from verbs with a range of meanings similar to that found in-er suffix in English. The prefix PE-is form-invariant, whereas PEN-has several nasal allomorphs. Given their similarity in form and function, the question arises of whether PE-and PEN-are allomorphs. We conducted a corpus-based analysis of their productivity, using the written Indonesian corpus in the Leipzig Corpora Collection. In this corpus, PENis apparently more productive than PE-. Interestingly, the frequency of words with PEN-correlates significantly with the productivity of the corresponding base verbs. In addition, PENis more integrated into the verbal system; verbs that have PEN-are part of larger verb families. PEN-attaches almost exclusively to verbs and creates nouns denoting agents and instruments. By contrast, PE-creates nouns denoting agents and patients and attaches not only to verbs but also to nouns and adjectives. For derived words with PE-, there is no significant correlation between the frequency of the nominalization and the frequency of its base. PE-also does not participate in the linearity of the productivity of the allomorphs of base and derived words that characterizes PEN-. Words with PE-are also more often input to further reduplication and inflectional variants than is the case for PEN-. This corpus-based research thus illustrates that affixes can have different qualitative and quantitative properties, although at first blush they look like allomorphs. Our analyses justify their treatment in the Indonesian literature as separate prefixes.
Indonesian has two prefixes, PE- and PEN-, that are similar in form and meaning, but are probably not allomorphs. In this study, we applied a distributional vector space model to clarify whether these prefixes have discriminable semantics. Comparisons of pairs of words within and across morphologically defined sets of words revealed that cosine similarities of pairs consisting of a word with PE- and a word with PEN- were reduced compared to pairs of only PE- words, or of only PEN- words. Furthermore, nouns with PE- were more similar to their base words than was the case for words with PEN-. The specialized use of PE- for words denoting agents, and the specialized use of PEN- for denoting instruments, was also visible in the semantic vector space. These differences in the semantics of PE- and PEN- thus provide further quantitative support for the independent status of PE- as opposed to PEN-.
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This paper presents a literature review on three nominalising prefixes in Indonesian: peN-, pe2- and per- whose function is to create agent, instrument, or patient (e.g. tulis ‘to write’ – penulis ‘writer’, wisata ‘travel’ – pewisata ‘traveller’ and tapa ‘ascetic’ – pertapa ‘hermit’). The ‘N-‘ in peN- stands for ‘nasal’ due to its five nasalised allomorphs (e.g. pen-, peny-, pem-, peng-, and penge-). However, there is one peN- allomorph which is not nasalised, henceforth called pe1-. Pe2-, the other prefix, is described as having similar in form and meaning as pe1-. Per-, the last prefixed is described as the archaic nominalisation prefix. Some theorists believed that Indonesian nominalisation is derived from peN- and per- in which pe2- belongs to per-, some argued that it is formed from peN- in which pe2- is one of peN- variant or per-, and some stated that nouns are derived from peN-, pe2- or per-. PeN- is described as the most productive of the three prefixes and is believed to correlate with the verbal prefix meN- (e.g. menulis ‘to write’ – penulis ‘writer’) with the process of affix substitution. Whereas pe2- is described as corresponding with the verbal prefix ber- (e.g. berwisata ‘to travel’ – pewisata ‘traveller’). Thus far, there has been no consensus addressing whether pe2- the allomorph of peN- or per- or none of them. This paper will examine existing theories and research relevant to this issue.
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