MORPHOLOGICAL MARKING IRREGULARITY OF BAHASA INDONESIA AND THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH WORDS

Abstract

All languages share the same lexical categories. Unlike English, however, Bahasa Indonesia carries fewer consistent patterns of morphological markers for word categories. A verb, for instance, is marked with the prefix {me-} as in me- nginjak (to step on); however, other verbs do not carry this marker as in makan (eat), tidur (sleep), and tergantung (depend). As for English, the suffix {-ing} or {-ed/-en}, for instance, indicates that the root is a verb regardless of the verb transitivity. This research investigated if the irregularity in the morphological marking of Bahasa Indonesia verbs created problems in acquiring English words. A test of the "word category assignment" (Test 1) was provided to two groups of respondents: undergraduate students of English and doctoral students of Bahasa Indonesia. And, "word-in-context translation into English" (Test 2) was given to a group of undergraduates of English group. The first was to know if the respondents managed to assign the Bahasa Indonesia words with correct lexical categories, and the second was to know if the words were assigned with correct word categories when translated in English. This was to know if the Bahasa Indonesia and English words received the same word-category assignment. The results show that errors in the assignment of the grammatical categories of the Bahasa Indonesia words were found pervasive among the two groups. And the lexico-grammar behavior seems to give impact on the categorization of the Bahasa Indonesia words when provided in English as also detected in the translation. It is strongly indicative that confusion in the word category assignment of Bahasa Indonesia gives impact on the acquisition of English words.