The influence of Chinese idioms on the grammar of the modern Malay language

Chernykh Aleksandra Sergeevna Senior Lecturer; Department of Philology of Southeast Asian Countries, Korea and Mongolia; Institute of Asian and African Countries, Lomonosov Moscow State University 125009, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Mokhovaya str., 11, building 1 chernykhas@my.msu.ru

Introduction

Malaysia is a multinational state in Southeast Asia with a population of 33.4 million people ^[1]. Geographically, the country is divided into Western (south of the Malacca Peninsula) and Eastern (north of Borneo) parts.

Chinese represent the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia and make up 22.6% of the population ^[1]. The first immigrants from China appeared in Malaysia in the XV–XVII centuries. They arrived in Malacca, a former major port city in the south of the Malacca Peninsula, where they settled and assimilated with the local population. The descendants of these Chinese-Malay mestizos are known as Baba Malays, and their native Creole language is characterized by genetic proximity to the bazaar language, which has become widespread as a means of communication for the multilingual population of the entire Indonesian archipelago. It is a pidgin, has several dozen words, has a reduced morphology and simplified syntactic models, freely borrows vocabulary from Chinese, Tamil and English ^{[2, pp. 56-57]}.

A new wave of mass migration from China began during the British colonial rule (late XVIII-1957) due to the British need for labor. This led to the emergence in Malaysia of native speakers of Hokkien (Fujian), Hakka, Cantonese, Chaozhou, Guangxi and Hanan dialects of the Chinese language ^{[3, p. 8]}. In the situation of Malay-Chinese language contact, the spoken language of the Malays is undergoing changes, which leads to interference and deviations from the norms in modern society.

The influence of colloquial and colloquial forms on modern language leads to a simplification of its grammatical turns. It is noted that MYA is evolving towards greater analyticity, that is, there is a change in the ratio between synthetic and analytical elements in favor of the latter ^{[4, p. 50]}. The phenomena under consideration allow us to assume in which direction the structure of the MYA will develop.

Classification of MYA variants

The Australian linguist Koh A. S. identifies the following variants of MYA that native Malays use to communicate with each other: standard, palace, colloquial, bazaar and regional dialects ^{[5, p. 5]}.

In our opinion, the bazaar language should be considered as a language of communication between speakers of non-Chinese origin. Malays, on the contrary, use the bazaar language only to communicate with representatives of other nationalities who have limited conversational skills. To obtain a more complete classification, it is necessary to take into account the use of existing variants of MYA by non-Chinese speakers to communicate with each other, and also include Malay–based Creole languages and "Menglish" - a mixed code, where the matrix language is MYA, and the lexifier language is English. "Menglish" is widely used by all residents of Malaysia, regardless of ethnicity.

Scheme No. 1. Options for Malaysia

            Thus, the diagram we have obtained shows that the standard and colloquial variants of MYA, as well as regional dialects and "Menglish" serve as communication tools for both Malays within their national group and non-Malays within their community.

            The object of this study is the spoken language. Traditionally, it is noted that Chinese idioms have an impact primarily on the spoken language, and in the standard or literary version their influence is limited to the purely lexical sphere ^{[6, p. 302]}.

            Spoken language was previously described only as oral and even as a language with insufficient written tradition ^{[5, p. 3]}. However, now we can say that the spoken language has both oral and written forms. It is used in various periodicals such as newspapers, entertainment magazines, as well as in postcards, advertising brochures, tabloid novels, talk shows, comedies, dramas, and on the Internet (the language of blogs, social networks, informal correspondence). Modern literature also uses colloquial language, since "the writer strives to create a work consonant with the linguistic sense of his readers, contemporaries" ^{[4, pp. 55-56]}.

Methodology

In previous works, structures uncharacteristic of standard Malay grammar were described, which arose under the influence of Chinese idioms in bazaar and Baba Malay ^{[7, pp. 55-56]}:

1. possessive construction with the punya postposition "to have, to own";

2. causative-beneficial construction with the verb kasi(h) "to love, to regret";

3. the verb kena "to be exposed, to experience" as a modal indicator of a forced action;

4. the verb mahu "to want, to desire" as an aspect indicator of the upcoming form;

Similar syntactic constructions arose in the "low" versions of MYA as a result of the identification of the grammatical functions of Hokkien lexemes with Malay lexemes in terms of semantic contact, that is, the coincidence of their meanings: "the hybridity of bazaar Malay is expressed not in direct lexical borrowing (full-meaning words and grammatical formants), but in semantic and syntactic calculus" ^{[7, p. 57]}.

Separate constructions are found in the works of domestic and foreign linguists as distinctive features of the spoken language ^{[5, 8-10]}. However, they do not always indicate their Chinese origin. 

As part of this study, we tested the use of the four constructions described above in standard and modern colloquial language.

The main sources of the rules of the standard language are publications issued by the Malaysian Language and Literature Council (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka), the main government body that deals with the standardization and development of MYA. First of all, this is the grammar of the standard ME "Tatabahasa Dewan" ^[11] and the last two editions of the explanatory dictionary of ME ^{[12, 13]}.

The use of the analyzed constructions in the spoken language was verified by the corpus ^[14] of the modern language, reflecting the actual use of linguistic means. Its volume in 2008 amounted to 135 million words, distributed across 10 subcorpuses, including sections such as "books", "magazines", etc. – samples of written standard and spoken versions of ME.

Our survey illustrates the individual use of MYA. Three groups of respondents participated in the experiment. The first group of 25 students from different universities filled out a questionnaire published on the Internet, the second group of 8 people from different professions and different levels of education answered questions in writing at a personal meeting, and six students from the Pedagogical University named after. Sultan Idris was interviewed verbally in Perak State.

We also checked the availability of descriptions of the desired constructions in the textbooks on MYA, the purpose of which is to teach the language based on the rules of standard MYA with instructions of the most commonly used forms ^[15-17].

The results obtained

1.      Constructions with the verb kena in the standard ME have only one meaning – undergoing actions:

Dia      kena                           tipu.

He's a preterp.action.       deceive

"He was deceived/He was deceived."

In modern colloquial language, the verb kena, being the semantic equivalent of the tioq lexeme from Hokkien ^{[7, p. 56]}, can act as a modal indicator and convey the meaning of a forced action:

Dia      kena                            sabar.                         

He needs to be tolerated

"He needs to be patient."

In the explanatory dictionary of 2010, the verb kena lacks a description of the meaning of a forced action ^[12]. However, in the new edition of 2021, this meaning of the verb kena appeared – "forced" or "necessary" to do something: Kita kena patuh pada peraturan dan undang-undang. – "We must follow the rules and laws" ^[13].

In the textbook "Grammar of Malay and Indonesian for students" ^[16] in the section devoted to the means of expressing the meaning of "coercion", the verb kena is described as a synonym for the English modal verbs have to "forced", must "must". Moreover, it is noted that this meaning is missing in the Indonesian language.

In the corpus of modern MYA ^[14], 42 constructions with the value of forced action account for 100 occurrences of the kena token. In the first group of respondents, 3 out of 25 students (12%) used the verb kena to express the meaning of "coercion", in the second – 2 out of 8 people (25%), and in the third – 3 out of 6 (50%). These results suggest that this construction is more commonly used in oral colloquial speech.

2.      Possessiveness, that is, the meaning of "having something", according to the grammar of the standard ME, can be expressed in the following ways:

a) attaching the prefix ber- to the root base denoting the object (buku "book" ? ber buku "I have a book");

b) word order – the definable always precedes the definition (buku "book", saya "I" ? buku saya "my book");

c) the verb ada "to have" (saya "I", buku "book", ada "to have" ? saya ada buku "I have a book");

d) special verbs with the meaning of possession (mempunyai "to possess", saya "I", buku "book" ? saya mempunyai buku "I have a book").

In colloquial language, the punya indicator, which is a semantic correlate of the Hokkien particle ^{[7, p. 55]}, becomes a possessive postposition in attributive constructions:

saya     punya buku  

I have a book

"my book"

These constructions are described in an explanatory dictionary and textbooks with a note about their belonging to the spoken language ^{[13, 15, 16]}.

In the corpus of modern ME ^[14], 48 possessive constructions with punya account for 100 occurrences of the punya token. The respondents' answers were distributed as follows: 3 out of 25 students (12%) in the first group used this postposition, 4 out of 8 (50%) in the second and 5 out of 6 (83%) in the third. Although the groups of respondents who participated in the experiment are few, the data obtained illustrate that the proportion of constructions with the postposition punya is higher in oral colloquial speech.

3.      The causative construction in standard MJ is formed by attaching the suffix –kan to the verb:

 keluar              +         meN-                           +         cahaya

"go out" verb. pref. active. the pledge "light"

?        mengeluarkan cahaya

"radiate light"

In oral colloquial language, the verb kasi(h) "to love, to pity" is often used to form causative constructions, by analogy with its semantic correlate in Hokkien – h? ^{[7, p. 56]}:

Dia      kasi                 keluar              cahaya.

He is the causal head of going out into the light

"It emits light."

Causative constructions with the verb kasi(h) have not been confirmed by textbooks ^[15-17]. However, their description is already in the explanatory dictionary with a note about belonging to colloquial speech ^[13]. And in the corpus of modern ME ^[14], 57 causative constructions account for 100 occurrences of the kasi lexeme. All the respondents in our survey used the means of the standard ME in causative constructions.

4. As for the verb mahu "to want, to desire", corresponding to be? in Hokkien ^{[7, p. 56]}, as an aspect indicator of the upcoming species, the constructions with it were also not confirmed during the analysis of sources and our survey.

Thus, the data obtained indicate that some grammatical changes that arose in the "low" versions of MYA under the influence of Chinese idioms have now penetrated into modern spoken MYA and are actively used by Malays in everyday communication both orally and in writing, both with representatives of other ethnic groups and among themselves.

Conclusions

The evolution and life of the modern ME take place in contact with the linguistic environment in the country. The spoken language of the Malays is undergoing major changes due to the mixing of the population with different ethnic roots.

Chinese idioms, devoid of derivative and grammatical affixation and using analytical means to express grammatical meanings, exert strong pressure on ME. This leads to an increase in the use of analytical constructions and a decrease in the use of synthetic elements in MYA, which corresponds to a global trend among international communication languages (for example, English). "Simplification of the structure of the language, its turns and grammatical constructions under the influence of colloquial and colloquial forms of the Malaysian language is a completely natural and natural phenomenon" ^{[4, pp. 55-56]}.

The obtained results contribute to the analysis of changes in grammatical structures and the determination of the vector of development of MYA towards greater analyticity.