TAM in three languages spoken in Indonesia: Diathesis and pre-verbal markers

This paper examines the expression of tense, aspect and mood (TAM) in three Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken in Indonesia, focusing mainly on the national language, Indonesian.TAM in Indonesian is almost exclusively expressed through free morphemes, namely about fifteen pre-verbal markers. Bajo and Lamaholot, two other Malayo-Polynesian languages among the hundreds spoken in Indonesia, have a hybrid aspectual system that uses both verb inflection and pre-verbal markers. In these three languages most of the inflections signalling aspect are related to diathesis.A striking feature of Indonesian is the interrelation of aspect and modality in most of its pre-verbal markers, which suggests a polysemy similar to that of French adverbs such as encore and déjà. The system of Indonesian aspect markers is also modular, in that these morphemes can enter into a large number of combinations, strictly specified by a series of rules. Thus the range of aspectual shades of meaning available to speakers of Indonesian is as extensive as it is in languages such as French, where TAM verb inflection is compulsory.