Syntactic Characteristic Analysis of Colloquial Makassar Indonesian Based on the Use of Personal Pronoun Affixes: From Interference to Borrowing

Abstract

This paper will prove the existence of colloquial Makassar Indonesian (CMI) by showing its syntactic characteristics based on the use of personal pronoun affixes. This is very interesting and important because in general colloquial Indonesian languages are spoken in other cities in Indonesia, for example Jakarta, Manado, Ambon, etc. is a subsystem of the Indonesian language (hereinafter abbreviated as IND), but CMI is really a subsystem or subvariant of the Makassar language (MAK), the mother tongue of the Makassarese people. Therefore, it is not easy for Makassar newcomers to master this CMI. To master it, they must first learn the basic rules of MAK syntax. The fundamental thing in this case is the change in language typology, namely CMI has been proven to have adopted the V-S-O (Verb-Subject-Object) typology of MAK. Meanwhile, IND has the S-V-O (Subject-Predicate-Object) typology. This happened because there was language contact between MAK and Malay (now IND), a language which became the forerunner to the birth of IND as the national language and the state language of the Republic of Indonesia. In this case, at first Makassar city residents tried to use Malay, but with MAK syntactic interference. Gradually this form of interference became the entry point for the borrowing of the MAK syntactic subsystem in the IND speeches of Makassar city residents. IND utterances with the characteristics of MAK syntax then become the characteristics of CMI, which has now reached the level of integration and convergence.