The Organization of Personal Pronouns in Sentence Structure Construction of Makassarese Language

Abstract

Makassarese language belongs to the Austronesian language family, currently spoken as a mother language by a group of people in South Sulawesi province, eastern Indonesia. This research focuses on personal pronoun organization in the sentence construction of the Makassarese language. The form, position, and function of personal pronouns in the language sentences are explained. It used ‘simak’ (to-observe) method in form of a conversational involved-observation technique including recording and note-taking in collecting data. The data sources were oral data and text data. The oral data were taken from five informants selected purposively. The text data were taken from the folklore script of South Sulawesi written in the Makassarese language. The data were presented descriptively and analyzed by using the distributional method. The findings show two forms of personal pronouns used dominantly in constructing sentences: free personal pronoun and bound personal pronoun (clitic). Position of the free personal pronoun is in front of, in the middle of, and at the end of a sentence. The clitic is in front of and at the end of the verb. In addition, there is also clitic attached at the end of the noun that serves as possessive. The sentence starting with a free personal pronoun forms the pattern of SV (subject-verb) or SVO (subject-verb-object) and the sentence starting with clitic-attached verb forms the pattern of VS (verb-subject) or VSO (verb-subject-object). The basic structure of the Makassarese sentence is VS or VSO. The derivative structure is SV or SVO with other varieties.