Relativization in the Bima Language: Redefining Subject in Primitives Syntactic-Semantic Universals

Abstract

Language typology still become an interesting subject to discuss in linguistics. With its assumption of the universality of language, it has not reached out all languages in the world and put them in groups. Many works on the area have succeeded, but some remain challenging. This paper tries to describe the relativization of grammatical functions in the Bima Language as one of syntactical tests of language typology. It is assumed that the relativization strategy applied in a language indicates its typology. If a language can relativize all arguments of a clause, the language shows the indication of accusative. However, if it only allows its subject argument, it indicates ergative. Based on the data about relativization of the Bima Language, relativization can only be done on subject grammatical, not the object, oblique, and adjunct like Balinese, Dyirbal, and the Language of Malagasy. However, most of the syntactical properties of the Bima Language, such as the word order, coreferences of grammatical relations and diathesis indicate accusative. The problem arouses that S of transitive in the Bima Language bears agentive function of accusative language rather than patient of ergative. These evidences evoke to redefine the notion of subject grammatical (S) of transitive in the primitives syntactic-semantic universal by putting semantic at the same consideration with syntax.