The Prefix Ta-: From Kambera to Indonesian

Abstract


Introduction
The Kambera language (BK) is the native language of Sumba Timur and is spoken by around 150,000 speakers in (Klamer, 2005) and probably more than three of four hundred thousand speakers to date.Most people living outside the main city, Waingapu, are native speakers of Kambera and use this language in everyday communication.In the city, BK is spoken by native Sumbanese people and people from outside the area who come and live there.Meanwhile, the Indonesian language (BI) is used in more formal places such as schools and offices, during government ceremonies and intercultural events.It is spoken by more than 90% of the population.However, one can still find some people in the village who do not speak BI for some reason.Besides BK and BI, there are also several local languages used, such as the Sabu language which is spoken by people from Sabu Island, other local languages of Sumba i.e.Kodi, Wejewa, and Anakalang, as well as local languages from other parts of Indonesia such as some vernaculars from Flores and Timor, Javanese and Balinese.Suparsa & Arka (2009) states that BI that is used in the regions of Indonesia can be classified as informal, non-standard language.This non-standard Indonesian has a large range of variations.It can be classified into two variations, the colloquial Indonesian which is known through the mass media TV, and nonstandard Indonesian which is characterized by many regional features of its speakers, which is influenced by the regional language (Paauw, 2007 as cited in Suparsa & Arka, 2009).
When languages meet and are used by the same speakers, the languages are in contact and most probably will result in borrowing of words or other linguistic units.Thomason (2001) states that language contact is when there is more than one language used in the same place at the same time.The bilinguals will alternately use their languages according to the situation.For example, the native speakers of BK must study and use BI in formal occasions (at schools or offices).At one time, the speakers might be using both languages in their speech.In such cases, bilingualism occurs.Thomason (2001) classified bilingualism into two types, symmetrical and asymmetrical bilingualism.The first happens when the speakers of language A speak a certain amount of language B, and vice versa the speakers of language B speak the same amount of language A. The latter, the asymmetrical bilingualism is what happens in Sumba Timur where native speakers of BK are much more likely to be bilingual than native speakers of BI are.Meaning to say that most speakers of BK can speak BI but not vice versa.
In the situation of language contact, it is rarely found that both languages are in the same position.Most of the time, one language is at a higher level than the other.BI, in its spread across the regions, is also positioned at a high level.Some studies such as Munandar (2016) stated that compared to Javanese, BI has a higher political position, thus placing Javanese in an inferior position.Suparsa & Arka (2009) also stated that the Rongga language as a minority (ethnic) language is in a lower position than BI which makes the contact that occurs unequal.
The result of this unequal contact is that the low-level languages tend to absorb a lot of elements of other languages (the high-level) without contributing back to other languages that come into contact with it (Suparsa & Arka, 2009).This fact is also true for the language contact situation in other parts of the world.Such as nowadays, many English words are absorbed into other languages, or in the past, the English language took a huge number of words from Latin.This research will study the opposite facts of the above phenomenon.This study focuses on the contribution of BK (as the nondominant language) to BI as the dominant language in higher positions.This study will explore the use of affix ta-in the use of nonstandard BI in Waingapu, the main city of Sumba Timur.It is the opposite fact since, although in a very limited number, there is an element of BK that is absorbed by the use of BI.For additional information, there are also elements from other local languages in Indonesia that are officially taken into BI and included in the dictionary, such as words from Javanese (emban, cantel) and Sundanese (nyeri, sawer).However, until present day, there are no words taken from BK into BI.Budiwiyanto (2022) stated that only around 3,99% of regional languages contribute to the total 90,049 entries of the BI dictionary.This amount is very small; none of these words come from Kambera.Several factors influenced this situation, such as the low frequency of the use of regional language vocabulary by journalists in the mass media, by writers in their essays, and by public figures, and the availability of new concepts in regional language vocabulary that are not owned by Indonesian.Seifart (2015) explained that there are two hypothetical scenarios for borrowing, indirect borrowing and direct borrowing.The former refers to the situation where R language borrows a number of complex loanwords from D language, including an affix) and then these complex loanwords come to be analyzed within the recipient (R) language, and eventually, the affix becomes productively used on native stems.The latter is when an affix, for example, is recognized by speakers of the recipient (R) language in their knowledge of the donor (D) language and applies the affix on native stems as soon as it is borrowed, with no intermediate phase.
The basic difference between these two types is where the speakers take the affix (for example) before they use it on native stems.If they take it from complex loanwords in the recipient language, it is called indirect borrowing.If they take it from their knowledge of the donor language, it is a direct borrowing (Seifart, 2015).
Although it seems that words are the most borrowed items, all aspects of language structure are subject to transfer between languages (Aikhenvald, 2006;Thomason, 2001).For instance, Asia Minor Greek has a great many borrowings from Turkish at all levels of its structure.Affixes are one of the language aspects which are rare to exist in the borrowing process.Borrowing affixes may be rare compared to lexical borrowing, but it is not random (Seifart, 2017) with more than 650 borrowed affixes having been studied.This research will explore the borrowing of the prefix ta-from BK to BI.This study is exceptional since the borrowing is from the non-dominant (as donor) language to the dominant language (as the recipient) which has never existed before (there is no data on words absorbed from BK to BI).Besides, most borrowing from local languages in Indonesia to BI are in form of words, not affixes.
The main study of BK referred to in this research is Klamer's (2011).Prefix ta-in BK "derives achievement verbs that are nonintentional, involuntary, accidental, sudden, or unexpected" (Klamer, 2011 p. 265).It means that when ta¬-is added as a prefix in front of a certain transitive verb, it will change the verb to be intransitive and at the same time show that something happens non-volitional and unexpectedly.In Klamer's words, they are 'causing an unintended achievement'.The prefix ta-in BK is a derivational affix since it changes the meaning of the verbs it is attached to.Some examples of the use of the prefix ta-in BK are in Table 1.Taken from Klamer (2011) In these examples, it seems that the meaning of the derived verbs is passive.However, they are not.In sentence (1a), the transitive present progressive verb is scratching (lunggur) is done by the agent, the subject 'he' (nanya), and has the object 'his body' (na ihi na).In (1b), the derived form talunggur is used to indicate the accidental achievement of a state.For (1b), the subject of the derived verb is not an agent."Because there is no agent implied in the derived verbs, they cannot be considered passive that is regularly derived from transitive verbs" (Klamer, 2011 p. 266).It will be the same for all the derived forms of intransitive verbs with the prefix ta-.The derived verbs express an achieved state and no agent is implied in the achievement.They are the results of something that happens accidentally or unintentionally.
This research is aimed at exploring the use of affix ta-in the use of non-standard BI in Waingapu as the result of borrowing from BK to BI, from the non-dominant (as donor) language to the dominant language (as recipient).This research studies the borrowing mechanism and the functions of affix ta-in the non-standard BI.

Methodology
This study is a descriptive qualitative study that will elaborate the phenomena of affix borrowing from BK to BI, particularly on the use of the non-standard BI in Waingapu, the capital city of Sumba Timur.By applying morphology approach, this study is aimed at understanding the processes of the use of the prefix ta-in forming new words in nonstandard use of BI.
In linguistics, morphology refers to the internal system or structure of words and how they are formed (Aronoff & Fudeman, 2011).Morphology studies patterns of word formation and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.It is one of the fundamental aspects of language research that focuses in identifying and analyzing the structure of words and other lingual units such as affixes (Muhammad, 2016).This research is carried out based on derivational morphology, which is a type of word formation that creates new words by changing the meaning or the part of speech of a base or root word.It often involves the addition of a prefix, suffix, or infix to the base or root word.Booij (2007) explains that the basic function of derivational processes is to enable the language user to make new lexemes.Lexemes belong to lexical categories such as N, V, and A and the derived lexemes may belong to a different category than their bases.
Data provision is carried out through recording and notetaking techniques.Data taken are in the form of actual speech events (utterances) used by the speakers.From this stage, number of sentences were collected.The sentences taken as data are those including the use of affix -ta.
Data analysis is performed using the distributional method.
Joseph (2021) mentions that distributional method is used to determine the structure of a language based on the distribution of its forms alone.In this stage, using the direct element categorization technique, the data collected will be segmented into several units or segments which are considered as constituents which form the lingual unit.The words which have the prefix ta-attached to them will be divided (the bases and the prefix) and categorized based on their classes of words and their parts of speech in the sentences.The analysis is also applied on the meaning of the words and the sentences.

Results and Discussion
The result of this study is a list of words in the non-standard BI using the prefix ta-.There are 20 words obtained from the actual utterances collected through data provision (see Appendix).These results are intransitive verbs of BI which have the prefix ta-attached in front of them.As it was mentioned before, when the prefix ta-is added in front of the verb, the derived verbs express an accomplished condition.In all sentences, there is no agent implied in the achievement.The subject in each sentence is not the agent who does the action.Following are some explanations regarding the examples.
In sentence (2), the intransitive verb taangkat is derived from BI transitive verb angkat which means to lift or to raise something from a lower to a higher position.When the prefix ta-is added, the word carries the meaning that the blouse is lifted unintentionally, might because of the wind or the blouse is too short.
Why is your face burnt?
In (3), the word tabakar comes from the verb bakar in BI and is added with the prefix ta-.The base, bakar, has the meaning of transforming something by exposure to heat or fire.When ta-is added, the process accidentally happens, not deliberately done.In (3), the face is unintentionally burning, most probably by sunshine. (4)

Makanan yang dari pesta banyak tabuang percuma.
A lot of food from the party is wasted.
The intransitive verb tabuang is derived from BI transitive verb buang which means to release (or to throw) something that is no longer useful on purpose.When ta-is added, the meaning somehow changes into the condition of something which is thrown away unintentionally, physically or not.In (4), the meaning is specific to the food which is wasted unintentionally (must be thrown away).Probably, because there is too much food.
(5) Dem kaki masih sakit tainjak waktu main bola.His leg still hurts (from being) stepped on when playing football.
In sentence (5), the derived intransitive verb tainjak has the base verb injak in BI which means to put foot (on the ground, surface, etc.).When the prefix ta-is added, the action of putting the foot on the ground or on a surface becomes undeliberately done.As in the sentence, the derived form tainjak is indicating the accidental achievement of a state, that the subject's (non-agent) leg was stepped on (by actors who are not informed in the sentence, most probably other players).( 6) Sa punya pakean kotor ada tasiram saja di kamar na.My dirty clothes just scattered in the room.
Sentence (6) has the derived intransitive verb tasiram which has the base form siram, a verb from BI. Siram means pouring water or other things on something, for example in the action of watering the flowers.When the prefix ta-is added, the action becomes unintentionally achieved.It shows that the pouring process is not done on purpose.In the sentence, the meaning is somehow widened, where the verb tasiram indicates the achieved state of the dirty clothes that are scattered in the room. (7) Pel dulu itu lantai, ada sirup tatumpah tadi.Mop the floor first, there was syrup spilled earlier.
In sentence ( 7), the verb tatumpah comes from the intransitive verb tumpah in BI which means that something is pouring out of its place (liquid, loose objects, etc.).By adding the prefix ta-, it indicates that the syrup is not deliberately poured out on the floor.It shows that the syrup is spilled unintentionally.
From the results above, it can be seen that the prefix ta-plays the exact function in BI as it does in BK.The sentences above show that when ta-is used, it derives an intransitive verb which is unintentionally or not deliberately accomplished.As Klamer (2011) mentions, the non-intentional, involuntary, accidental, or unexpected verbs.
The prefix ta-is used to derive the agentless intransitive achievement verbs.The subjects of the verbs are never the agent, they are the patients.It is why they are considered semantic ergatives, unaccusatives, or anticausative (Klamer, 2011).They are ergative because basically, they have a subject that can be used as a subject for intransitive verbs, as well as the direct object for transitive verbs.For example, the sentence kenapa ko punya muka tabakar?has the subject ko punya muka (your face), which can be used as the subject of intransitive verb or the direct object for transitive structure (i.e.matahari bakar ko punya muka in non-standar BI or matahari membakar wajahmu in standard BI).
They are unaccusatives because the grammatical subject of the intransitive verb is not a semantic agent, which is not responsible for the action expressed by the verb.For example, in the sentence Karena hujan deras, itu akar pohon tacabut dari tanah, the subject is itu akar pohon (the tree root) and the verb is tacabut.The subject here is not accountable to cause the tree root to be uprooted.Instead, the action tacabut (unintentionally uprooted) is something that happens to the subject.Another example is itu tongkat tapatah bagi dua.The subject is itu tongkat (the stick) and the verb is tapatah.The action tapatah (accidentally broken) is something that happens to the subject, not caused by the subject.
They are anticausative since the intransitive verbs show the actions/events which affect the subject, without giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event.As in unaccusatives, the subject is the patient.For example, in sentence sinyal di sini biasa taputus-putus, the subject sinyal di sini (the signal here) is the patient of the event taputus-putus (happening intermittently because lacking in steadiness).Another example is in pel dulu itu lantai, ada sirup tatumpah tadi.The subject sirup (syrup) is the patient.The derived verb tatumpah is something that happens to the subject, not by the subject.In these sentences, it seems impossible to refer to the cause of the event directly since the structure does not provide it.
The borrowing of the prefix ta-from BK to (the use of non-standar) BI also shows another fact.The mechanism used is direct borrowing.As it was mentioned earlier, there are two types of borrowing, indirect and direct borrowing.When the speakers take an affix (for example) before they use it on native stems from complex loanwords in the recipient language, it is called indirect borrowing.If they take it from their knowledge of the donor language, it is a direct borrowing (Seifart, 2015).Since there is no history of massive borrowing from BK to BI in terms of words, for example, and other elements, then it is impossible to conclude that this borrowing comes from a complex loanword of BK in BI.This borrowing of the prefix ta-simply occurs because the speakers of the non-standard BI, who are also the speakers of BK (fluent or not), have the knowledge of the function of the prefix ¬ta-and borrow it to form the agentless intransitive achievement verbs.Knowledge is the essential condition for direct borrowing because when such knowledge is absent, the only way to get an affix is from complex loanwords (Seifart, 2015).Winford (2005) has explained direct affix borrowing usually occurs in bilingual speech groups where, most probably, the speakers of the donor language are also the recipient language speakers.This is in line with the case in question, where the speakers of BK are also the speakers of BI.The speakers create hybrid formations first by using donor-language affixes with recipient language stems while speaking the donor language (Seifart, 2015) and it becomes something that is practical to use and be applied in the recipient language use.
In her study, Klamer (2011) stated that the use of the prefix ta-derives an intransitive verb from a transitive root.It means that ta-is attached to transitive verbs and the derivation form is intransitive verbs.It is also the same case found in this study that in most examples, the roots are transitive verbs and then derive intransitive verbs.For example, taangkat has the transitive root angkat and when ta-is added, the derived form is the intransitive verb.The derived intransitive verb tacabut also has the transitive root cabut.
However, this study also shows a wider choice of roots and derived forms in this borrowing.For example, the intransitive verb tarobek has an adjective root robek.This word can be added with the prefix me-in BI to derive the transitive verb merobek.It should be noted that in the non-standard use of BI, the use of formal affixes is often skipped by the speakers.They may say dia merobek buku itu (he tore up the book) in formal BI, and dia robek itu buku in non-standard BI.Meaning to say that, whether it is realized or not, the speakers choose different roots to add to the prefix.
Another important note of this study is about the derivation form after the prefix ta-is added.Although it is only found in one case, it should be explained here as linguistic evidence.In the case of tarobek, in the sentence dia punya celana tarobek, jadi kami semua tertawa, the subject is dia punya celana (his pants) and the derived intransitive verb is tarobek (accidentally broken).When the verb tarobek can also be used in different structures such as in the following sentence.
(8) Sa lihat dia pakai baju tarobek pigi toko I saw him wearing a torn shirt in the shop In this example, the derived form tarobek is not an intransitive verb anymore in the sentence.This sentence is a compound sentence which consists of two clauses, sa lihat dia (I saw him) and dia pakai baju tarobek pigi toko (he wore a torn shirt in the shop).In the second clause, the derived form tarobek is used in a noun phrase baju tarobek (torn shirt).It means that, in this case, the derived form can be acting as adjective and modify the noun.
The last important note on this borrowing is about the connection of the prefix ter-of BI with the prefix ta-in question.In BI, there are various affixes, ranging from prefixes, infixes, suffixes, and confixes or ambifixes.One of them is the prefix ter-.In BK, as it is the main topic in this study, there is the prefix ta-.In BI, the prefix ter-functions to derive verbs that express things that are already happened or achieved, among them, accidentally and suddenly.It in fact has the same function as the prefix ta-in Kambera.
It may raise a question on these two prefixes' relationship.First, the non-standard use of BI in most eastern Indonesia areas is characterized by elision of sounds.Elision (or deletion) is a term used in phonetics and phonology to refer to the omission of sounds in connected speech, where both consonants and vowels may be affected (Crystal, 2008).For example, in Waingapu (and other areas in Sumba), the pronoun saya is changed into sa where the syllable ya is elided.Malo (2021) studied syllable elision in almost all pronouns, both as subject and object in a sentence, such as sa from the pronoun saya and ko from the pronoun kau.This elision, combined with other processes, also leads to the creation of new words that function as possessive pronouns as in dia punya becomes de pung and later changed to dem to denote his/her.Besides, pronouns, other word classes such as verbs are also prone to elision.For instance, the verb pergi becomes pi or pigi and the adverb sudah becomes su.Does the use of prefix ta-in the non-standard BI in Waingapu a result of borrowing from BK or a result of the elision of ter-to ta-?
The answer is these two mechanisms might both have happened.With a tendency of the speakers (mostly in eastern Indonesia) to speak fast at a rapid speed and simplify words and phrases to ease pronunciation and meet their needs for easy and fast conversation (Malo, 2021), then the prefix ta-might be also a part of elision of the prefix ter-of BI.At the same time, the speakers find the easiest mechanism from BK, then the prefix ta-is chosen.It should be noted that, since there is no clear pattern yet on the elision, then the most probable cause of the use of the prefix tais borrowing from BK.

Conclusion
From the analysis, there are some conclusions that can be inferred.First, the prefix ta-from BK is used in the non-standard use of BI in Waingapu through the borrowing process.This is the first borrowed element of BK found in BI, particularly in the nonstandard use.The prefix ta-is used to derive the agentless intransitive achievement verbs.The subjects of the verbs are never the agent, they are the patients and they are considered as semantic ergatives, unaccusatives, or anticausative verbs.This use in BI is exactly the same function that this prefix has in BK.
Second, the prefix ta-is attached directly to the roots.The roots mostly are transitive and intransitive verbs, as well as adjectives.The derived forms after ta-is attached are mostly intransitive verbs and limited adjectives (used as modifiers in noun phrases).
Third, the prefix ta-is borrowed through direct borrowing which relies on the knowledge of the speakers (most probably the bilinguals who speak both BK and BI) who create the hybrid forms of the prefix ta-and the roots.The borrowing occurred in the past when native speakers of Kambera were insisted on using bahasa Indonesia as the formal language.Along with the elision issue explained above, the speakers borrowed the prefix ta-from BK and started using it with BI.The practical use of the prefix ta-could be the most prominent reason why this phenomenon happened.Although Klamer (2011) claimed it to be one of the unproductive affixes in BK, tasomehow became productive based on this situation.

Table 1 .
Examples of the Use of the Prefix Ta-in BK (1) a. Lunggur nanya na ihi na He is scratching his body.b.Nanjoru nun ana hapi, talunggur hala na ihi na (Because) the cow fell, its body was completely scraped.

Table 2 .
Data of Words Using the Prefix Ta-