Dutch affixes in Indonesian
Summary
Description
Information and examples are drawn from Jones (1984), Verhaar (1984), Tadmor (2009), Torchia and Djuhari (2011) and personal communications with Uri Tadmor, David Gil, John Bowden, and a number of Indonesians working at the Jakarta Field Station of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in 2011, supplemented with etymological information from Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/ ［accessed: 18.06.2024］) and internet searches. Only affixes that are attested in hybrid formations are given below. These include nouns with native Austronesian stems and borrowed stems that were likely borrowed before the commencement of Dutch influence.
5 miscellaneous nominal derivation, also used on adjectives
- anti- ‘anti’, e.g. anti-kuman (kuman ‘germ’) ‘anti-germ’, anti nyamuk (nyamuk ‘mosquito’) ‘anti-mosquito’, anti-cewek (cewek ‘girl’) ‘anti-girls’, anti-cowok (cowok ‘boy’) ‘anti-boys’, anti aturan jam malam (aturan jam malam ‘curfew’) ‘anti-curfew’. Much like in English, this affix can also be used as an independent morpheme modifying, for instance, a headless relative clause, as in saya anti pemikiran Tessa ‘I’m against what Tessa thinks’, Selebriti Anti Aturan Berkendara? ‘Celebrity against traffic regulations? (caption of a picture)’.
- eks- ‘former’, e.g. eks pacar (pacar ‘romantic partner’) ‘ex-girlfriend/boyfriend’, eks tapol (tapol ‘political prisoner’) ‘former political prisoner’. Possibly, eks is an independent word.
- kontra- ‘contra’, e.g. kontra pendidikan gratis (pendidikan gratis ‘free education’) ‘against free education’, also kontraalami (alami ‘natural’, Arabic stem) ‘unnatural’, saya kontra dengan pemikiran Tessa ‘I’m against what Tessa thinks’. Kontra may be an independent adverb rather than a prefix.
- pro- ‘pro’, e.g. pro pendidikan seksualitas (pendidikan seksualitas ‘sex education’) ‘pro-sex education’, pro perkembangan (perkembangan ‘growth’) ‘pro-growth’, kamu pro atau anti pemikiran Tessa? ‘Are you for or against what Tessa thinks?’ As indicated by the spelling, this may also be a free-form word.
- sub- ‘sub-, noun denoting a subordinate version of a noun’, e.g. subbagian (bagian ‘part’) ‘subpart’, subpohon (pohon ‘tree’) ‘subtree’.
3 adjectivizing prefixes
- inter- ‘inter-, forms adjectives from nouns’, e.g. intersuku (suku ‘tribe’) ‘inter-tribal’, interkelompok (kelompok ‘group’) ‘inter-group’.
- intra- ‘intra-, forms adjectives from nouns’, e.g. intrakelompok (kelompok ‘group’) ‘intra-group’.
- non- ‘negative, forms adjectives from nouns and predicates’, e.g. nonlingkungan (lingkungan ‘environment’) ‘non-environmental’, nonmigas (migas ‘fossil fuel’) ‘non-fossil fuel’, nonmenarik (menarik ‘interesting’) ‘non-interesting’.
3 abstract noun forming suffixes
- -isme ‘abstract noun’, e.g. caloisme (from calo ‘agent or intermediary who negotiates government things on someone’s behalf’) ‘a mentality and system characterized by using the power of one’s position for personal gain’, goblokisme (neologism, from goblok ‘stupid’) ‘stupidity’, jahatisme (jahat ‘bad, evil’) ‘crime’, also premanisme (from preman ‘gangster’, a Dutch stem) ‘gangsterism’, a term most probably coined in Indonesian.
- -sasi ‘abstract noun’, e.g. kondomi-sasi ‘spreading the use of condoms’, this example is also given by Verhaar (1984:24). This suffix is probably not the same as -isasi. Its status as an affix is disputed by de Vries (1984), see also Mueller (2007:1220).
- -isasi ‘transformation’, e.g. swastanisasi (swasta ‘private business’) ‘privatization’, kapurisasi ‘adding lime (calcium)’; in both examples, the stems are also borrowed from Sanskrit, but these nouns were formed in Indonesian. The complete form of this suffix is -(n)isasi with n occurring after vowel-final roots. Its status as a productive affix is argued for by de Vries (1984), see also Mueller (2007:1220). bodohisasi (neologism from bodoh ‘stupid’) ‘becoming stupid, stupidification’, bungkamisasi (bungkam ‘to hush or gag someone’, Torchia and Djuhari 2011:84) ‘efforts to keep someone mum about a scandal’.