Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sundanese complementation

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research investigates the grammar of complex sentences (sentences which contain a dependent clause as well as a main clause) in Sundanese, a language spoken by the second largest ethnic group in Indonesia. The primary goals are to describe various Sundanese sentences containing clausal complements (the dependent clause) and to compare their structure with that of other languages of the world in order to test various hypotheses of contemporary linguistic theory. Indigenous to western Java, Sundanese is spoken by approximately 34 million speakers, making it the third most widely spoken language in Indonesia (following Indonesian and Javanese). Despite the large number of speakers, Sundanese has received surprisingly little attention in the Western linguistics literature even though there is a fairly robust literature of closely related languages. Furthermore, what literature there is does not address the sentence-types to be examined here in any systematic or comprehensive way. Thus, this study will fill a sizable gap in our knowledge of the language and will provide a repository of data that will contribute to current and future linguistic debates. Since no exhaustive descriptions of these structures currently exist, compilation of primary linguistic data is a crucial component of the project. Bandung, Indonesia will serve as the principal location for data collection, which will be conducted by the native-speaker co-PI. Several methods will be used to gather the necessary data: direct elicitation (face-to-face sessions with native speakers getting acceptability judgments), recorded conversations and oral narratives, written texts, and existing accounts of the language. The resulting corpus of sentences and recordings will constitute a repository of data available to other researchers and interested members of the public.