MOTION-DIRECTION SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN JAVANESE: A LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Abstract

Motion-direction serialization (MDS) is a type of verb serialization that involves motion and directional verbs. This type of verb serialization commonly occurs in serializing languages including Javanese. This paper aims to discuss the characteristics and syntactic structure of MDS in Javanese. The syntactic structure, which comprises constituent and functional structures, is presented by using the theory of lexical -functional grammar (LFG) By adopting the lexical conceptual structure, the writer presents a model of functional structure to explain the syntactic and semantic relation between the motion verb and the directional verb in MDS. The data used in this study were taken from the novel “Suparto Brata’s Omnibus: Kumpulan Roman” written by Suparto Brata (2007) In Addition, this paper also used spoken data from two Javanese native speakers of the Surakarta dialect. The result shows that MDS in Javanese shares the same SUBJ argument, aspect, and negation. This shows that MDS expresses a single event. The LFG analysis of MDS shows that the directional verb has an X-COMP function, which is semantically represented as DIRECTION in the functional structure. The use of lexical conceptual structure in lexical entry and functional structure can clearly show the semantic and syntactic relation of the verbs involved in MDS.