Re: Indo. tidak/bukan (was: A question and introduction)

On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 01:11:12PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
> H.S.Teoh wrote:
[snip]
> >Hmm. That could be a Malay colloquialism then. Nevertheless, I've always
> >thought of _bukan_ as "not so" and _tidak_ as "did not". The above example
> >I gave actually more likely implies "I wasn't looking at her, I was doing
> >something else"; whereas _tidak_ would mean, "I was looking, but didn't
> >see her".
> >
> Now that you jog my memory a bit, it possible this is where
> "bukanlah/tidaklah" might be used:
[snip]
> (But as we both agree, the forms with -lah are not common; and -lah in any
> case is the bane of non-native speakers.......)
[snip]

Hmm. The forms with -lah seem to be peculiar to Indonesian. Malay drops
most of the -lah suffixes; and as far as own experience with Malay goes,
-lah has degenerated/mutated into a vocative emphatic suffix. (It's a bit
difficult to explain this... but if you have any experience with, eg.,
Singaporean pidgin English, you'll know what I mean.)


T

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