Prosody in Indonesian Languages

Abstract

This book presents highlights of the results of the research program “Phonetics and phonology of (word) prosodic systems in the languages of Indonesia”. The main focus of the book is on (i) the way in which questions and statements are realized and (ii) (absence of) lexical stress and the way in which the stress is realized in Indonesian languages. Apart from these main topics one chapter gives an analysis of the lexical tone system of Magey Matbat, a language spoken on one of the Raja Ampat islands, Papua province. Intonation, in particular the question-statement opposition, was studied for Kutai Malay, Manado Malay and Yogyakarta palace Javanese. Like in Western languages, intonation plays an important part in the statement-question opposition in all three languages described in this volume. Word-based stress was researched in Betawi Malay, (Standard) Indonesian and Toba Batak. Findings suggest that more Indonesian languages than earlier estimated lack a word-based stress system. The five PhD students in the project contributed one chapter each, highlighting some aspect of their dissertation work. The postdocs contributed two co-authored chapters. The project coordinators’ introductory chapter includes a short introduction to prosody and its properties. A conclusion chapter briefly summarizes the main results of the project. This book is of special interest to experimental linguists working on stress and intonation and to students of Indonesian linguistics.