Noun Phrase in Mandailing Language

Abstract

This paper discusses on the rules of Noun Phrase (NP) in Mandailing language. The objectives are firstly to structurally examine the phrase structure rules (PSR) of NP in Mandailing language and to investigate the constituents of each rules in NP. The method is descriptive qualitative with a case study. The data taken from the native speakers of Mandailing language through interviewing. The data are the utterances of Mandailing language in daily conversation. The analysis is based on the use of X-Bar theory, to see how NPs in Mandailing language are hierarchically governed and presented in tree diagram. Thus, the findings showed that there are five major rules of NP in Mandailing language, (a) single noun as headword, (b) pre-modifier preceedes head noun, (c) post-modifiers follows head noun, (d) head noun between pre-modifier and post-modifier, and (e) complex NP with coordinative conjunction. Also, there is found particle na to relate NP with the complement such as AP. To summarize, Mandailing language has similar patterns of word order with Indonesia language. Overall, this research gives contribution to provide a deep understanding in studying morphosyntactic in linguistics especially phrase structures beyond the effort on exploring and revitalizing a regional language in Indonesia.