Riset dan Publikasi

14/6/2023

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1. Indonesian-English Vowels: An Acoustic Study 

   Ferdinan Okki Kurniawan 

   Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia 

   Compared to English varieties spoken in the inner circle of Kachru’s (2005) model (e.g., Australian 

   English and New Zealand English), the English variety spoken in Indonesia, especially in the field of  

   acoustic phonetics, is still understudied.  

    

   Using the Praat computer program (Boersma and Weenink, 2021), this acoustic study investigates  

   the English vowels production from ten female and five male native speakers of Indonesian. The  

   formants (F1 and F2) of their English vowels in words heed /hid/, hid /h?d/, head /h?d/, had /æ/, 

   hod /h?d/, hawed /h?d/, and who’d /hud/ (following Ladefoged, 2011) are measured and then 

   compared with the vowels produced by American English speakers from Hillenbrand et al.’s (1995)  

   investigation, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. For male speakers, the Indonesian and American  

   speakers’ tongue positions of vowels /æ/, /?/, and /u/ (pointed by red circles) show significant  

   differences. On the other hand, the other vowels (indicated by black circles) do not seem to show  

   significantly different tongue positions. The results from female speakers show similar results  

   where vowels /æ/ and /?/ are different.  

    

   The difference in this study happens across the gender category. It seems that the linguistic factor  

   determines the difference more than the extra-linguistic factor, i.e., gender. The linguistic factor  

   might come from the Indonesian speakers’ vowel inventory. Lapoliwa (1981) mentioned that  

   Indonesian has six phonemes: /i, e, ?, a, u, o/, with /?, ?, ?, ?/ occur as the allophones. Indonesian  

   students’ production of vowels /æ/ and /?/ might deviate from the American English speakers as  

   these two vowels are not in the phonemic inventory and do not occur in the allophonic variation in  

   Indonesian.  

    

   This study may serve as the basis for further investigation with larger samples from the population.  

   Suppose the results are different from the speech patterns produced by the native English speakers.  

   In that case, Indonesian speakers may form a unique variety of English, namely Indonesian-English  

   (c.f., following Kachru’s 2005 Asian-Englishes model). Since there are more than 700 local  

   languages in Indonesia, we need to carefully consider whether each region develops its own variety  

   of English because of contact between English and local languages; each part develops its own  

   variety of English due to contact between English and a variety of Indonesian; or all areas develop a  

   similar variety as the contact may occur between English and Standard Indonesian as the variety  

   widely spoken across the archipelagos. 

    

   Presented at KOLITA 20 

   
   

   
   

2. Variation and Change in Jakarta Indonesian: Evidence from Final Glottals 

   Ferdinan Okki Kurniawan 

   Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia 

   
   

   Based on the observed patterns of variation in vowel-final [-?], [-h], and [Ø] in seven function words that are produced in utterance-final position, this study offers a study of linguistic contact between Betawi and Standard Indonesian (SI) that together contribute to an emergence of a variety of Indonesian called Jakarta Indonesian (JI). The relationship between these varieties is identified in the patterns of variation that show a general trend towards increased use of the SI influenced form among the educated speakers and females. Using a large-scale speech corpus, this investigation provides evidence of the patterns of variation and sound change that are taking place, their direction, and how their adoption correlates with genders and educational categories represented in the corpus. Additionally, this study demonstrates the importance of naturalistic speech corpus in examining the actual patterns of variation focusing on colloquial speech, which we know to be the locus of language change. 

   
   

   Accepted for publication in Oceanic Linguistics 

   
   

   
   

3. Social Dimensions of the Nasal Prefix in Jakarta Indonesian  

   Ferdinan Okki Kurniawan 

   Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia 

   
   

   Standard Indonesian has a widely used active verbal prefix /m?N-/ marking the active voice which alternates in its shape at the prefix-root boundary. Most previous studies were devoted to Standard Indonesian as spoken in formal contexts. Less attention, however, has been given to the pattern of this verbal prefix in a more colloquial variety of Indonesian, as the casual everyday language spoken in Jakarta, i.e., Jakarta Indonesian, with the cognate prefix /N-/ or /??-/.??Rather than relying on impressionistic observation, data in this study are drawn from a naturalistic speech corpus in informal settings (Gil et al. 2015). The use of a corpus could help us to verify impressionistic observations and allow us to understand more about the patterns of variation of nasal assimilation. This study finds extra linguistic conditioning, namely gender and educational backgrounds of the speakers, determine patterns of variation of the nasal prefix. 

   
   

   Access to the article: doi/10.15026/120256