A LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR REPRESENTATION OF INDONESIAN VERBAL SENTENCES

Abstrak

This paper presents a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) description of Indonesian
structures with a verbal predicate. The similarity of Indonesian and English in this
type of construction has enabled the application of the original patterns of LFG for
the English structures on its Indonesian counterparts. However, some adjustment
has to be made in the description of the constituent structure (c-structure). The
Indonesian constituent structure here is unique in that whilst it is organized
endocentrically, it uses lexocentric means of function identification. Another different
feature description that distinguishes the Indonesian LFG representation from the
English one is the absence of the features for tense and agreement in the feature
structure (f-structure) due to the fact that Indonesian structures are not subject to
tense and number agreement. The number feature, however, appears in the cstructure merely to show the status of the subject in terms of singularity or plurality.
In addition to the distinctive descriptions above, some constraints and thematic
arguments based on the Lexical Mapping Theory have to be applied in the phrase
structure rules to accommodate some peculiar characteristics of Indonesian verbal
structures, such as those dealing with the position of adjuncts and oblique objects.