On Se-Nya In Indonesian

Abstract

This article aims at describing the use of se-nya con-fix in Indonesian. All data presented in this paper are intuitively collected through introspective method. Their grammatical matters and acceptance are empirically tested with other native speakers. The research found that se-nya in Indonesian constitutes a productive affix because this affix can be combined to various categories of base, such as adjective, verb, negative, modal, etc. Its identity often causes confusions with other affix combination which has similar physical appearance but very different deep structure, such as combination of se- and -nya , and fake se and -nya. With regard to grammatical function, se-nya from various categorical bases can be used to derive adverbs and subordinate conjunctions. The adverbs derived from se-nya may represent various grammatical meanings, such as manner, superlative quality, modesty quality, modality, succession, contrast, completeness and conditional. Uniquely, sometime the adverbs constructed by reduplication bases have no significant different in meaning from those are done by non reduplication ones. Finally, the subordinate conjunctions constructed by se- nya semantically represents grammatical meaning ‘conditional’.