The Semantic Typology Of `Berat' And Reras' In The Indonesian Collocations

Abstract

The study of collocation as a linguistic phenomenon has not found a central place in theoretical linguistics, perhaps because its proper province is the rather ill-defined area of linguistic patterning that is neither clearly syntactic nor clearly semantic (Clear, 2008: 436). This empirical phenomenon makes language speakers' understanding on word combinability less well-structured. Consequently it brings about the degree of meaningfulness of an expression is less meaningful. To some extent, words do not combine freely, instead they have varying degrees of co-occuring to other words which language speakers must obey to. In the Indonesian language, the words 'berat' and 'keras' that are postnominally structured belong to words with which words being embedded get semantic intensification. As the semantic intensifying linguistic units, these words can potentially create collocations. When the words 'berat' and 'keras' collocate with the same words and naturally the collocations are natively accepted by Indonesian native speakers, logically there are two collocations. The acceptability of collocations in a language system does not merely need syntactic justification, but it also needs semantic justification. The semantic dimensions of collocations become necessary conditions to understand as the entailment of the acceptability of the collocation from the syntactic point of view. Therefore it makes a collocated word less meaningful when the collocation is naturally accepted syntactically in a language, but its semantic dimension is less understood. Collocation is a language phenomenon which syntactically enables words to occur together repeatedly, and semantically its meaning is traceable from its immediate constituents (Saeed, 2000: 60). For examples: tingkat keberhasilan, jenjang pendidikan, derajat kesehatan, kepadatan pendudulc, pekerja berat, pekerja keras, sound settlement, resounding success, crying shame, are collocations in the Indonesian and the English language. Generally collocations refer to a set of lexical items that can logically cohabitate referring to the language system, and no new meanings can be derived from them. In line with this notion Cruse (1995: 40) pointed out that the term collocation refers to sequences of lexical items which habitually co-occur, but which are nonetheless hilly transparent in the sense that each lexical constituent is also semantic constituent. Martin (2008: 56) elaborately defines collocation as: (a) a word group consisting of two conceptual elements: a collocator (determinants) and a base (determinatum); (b) having a certain syntactic type (N+N, V+N, A+N, Adv+V; Adv+A, N+A); (c) showing a semantic, type-based, relation between the two elements; and (d) the more the collocator is, conceptually speaking, type-bound (bound to a conceptual type or category) and the more it is, lexically speaking, token-bound (bound to a lexical token/item), the more we are dealing with a collocation that conceptually and lexically forms a unit, i.e. one that is a lexical collocation. The mastery of collocations enables a native speaker to communicate something naturally and easily understood, to enrich ways of expressing his/her ideas, and to make his/her brain easier to remember and use language in chunks or blocks rather than as single words (http://www.englishclub.com/ vocabulary/collocations.htm). Collocations help learner's language use, both with the development of fluency and native like selection (Shin; Nation, 2008: 340). It clearly demonstrates that collocation can make the way of someone to communicate both writtenly and spokenly more elegant. It can also be an indicator of the degree of maturity of a language speaker in which he/she communicates. The more mature the understanding of a language speaker to the language, the higher the degree of correctness of the language speaker to collocate words correctly. Halliday (in Saeed, 2000: 60) compared the collocation patterns of two adjectives strong and powerful, which might seem to have similar meanings. English native speakers can say both strong arguments and powerful arguments. It means that the two adjective can collocate to the same words correctly. But it does not mean that such phenomena can apply to other words. In English strong tea is a correct collocation, but powerful tea is not, a powerful car is natively accepted, but not a strong car. Analogically speaking it also happens in the Indonesian language. In the Indonesian language it exists