The Dichotomy of Auxiliaries in Javanese: Evidence from Two Dialects

Abstract

Cole et al. find that auxiliary fronting in yes-no questions divides auxiliaries in the dialect of Peranakan Javanese as spoken in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia into two types: low auxiliaries that can front and high auxiliaries that cannot. In my research on two geographically distinct dialects of Javanese (Paciran Javanese, spoken in Paciran, East Java; and Standard Javanese, spoken in Yogyakarta and Solo, Central Java), I broach the question of whether this division is a feature of only Peranakan Javanese, given the uniqueness of this dialect. I present results from two different methods (elicitation and a Likert-type rating task via a questionnaire), showing that this division holds for auxiliary fronting in both Paciran Javanese and Standard Javanese. These results suggest that the division of auxiliaries is a property that holds across all dialects of Javanese. In further exploration of the structural properties of the two types of auxiliaries in Javanese, I show that two other syntactic constructions-VP-topicalization and Subject-auxiliary answers to yes-no questions-also exhibit the same dichotomy of auxiliaries in both dialects, where only low auxiliaries are grammatical. I offer significant amendments to Cole et al.'s analysis of auxiliary fronting in Javanese to account for these additional constructions.

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