Pragmatic studies on Balinese speech act verbs

Abstract

This article is aimed at discussing Balinese Speech Act Verbs from the pragmatic studies. The data are oral and written ones, the former was collected by interview from the key informant from two regencies in Bali namely: Tabanan and Bangli regencies. The later, i.e written data was obtained by observation and note-taking, taken from four Balinese short stories. The collected data was analysed by applying the Pragmatic theory. The result shows that from the types of Balinese speech act verbs, there are locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary speech act verbs. Examples of the Locutionary Acts: Ia nyatua lakar luas ka Bali ‘he tells to go to Bali’ Illocutionary acts : Ia metakon dija meli togog ‘He asks where buying statue’ Perlocutionary acts : Ia nundén apang nulungin ngaba batu ‘he instructs to help him bring stone’ There are also five categories of Balinese speech act verbs, they are: (1) representatives which bind the speaker to the truth of the stated proposition: nyutetang ‘conclude’ (2) directive which the speaker's attempts to compel the addressee to act nunas ‘request’ (3) commissives which obligate the speaker to take some future action masamaya ‘to promise’, metanjénan ‘to offer’)