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

H.S.Teoh wrote:


>On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 11:13:29PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
>> H.S.Teoh wrote:
>[snip]
>> >If you use _bukan_, you get a different shade of meaning:
>> >        saya bukan melihat gadis itu
>> >        "I wasn't looking at that girl." ("It's not her I was looking
at").
>>
>> To this forgetful, decidedly non-native speaker, that doesn't sound like
>> proper _Indonesian_-- we were always told that you cannot negate a verb
with
>> Bukan.
>[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:
--Bukanlah saya lihat gadis itu, [tapi.....], negating the entire sentence,
"it was not the case {that I saw  her} [ but rather was doing something
else.....}"
--Tidaklah saya lihat gadis itu, negating the action only: "it didn't happen
that I saw her"
(But as we both agree, the forms with -lah are not common; and -lah in any
case is the bane of non-native speakers.......)

>Try to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out. -- theboz
I like that.  One of my favorites: "May the Good Lord open your mind and
shut your mouth." A prayer for the Falwells of this world.

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