Inflection, Derivation and Compounding

Inflection, derivation and compounding:
preliminaries

In this section I briefly introduce certain important notions which will figure widely later: inflection, in which we create word forms of lexemes (such as the plural or past tense), derivation, in which we create new lexemes from old lexemes, and the compound word, a single word formed by combining two other words. We begin with compounds.

The most straightforward type of compound simply consists of two wordsconcatenated together: morphology + article = morphology article; house + boat = houseboat. The right-hand member is the head of the compound, determining the syntactic category and meaning of the whole (a morphology article is a

kind of article, a houseboat is a kind of boat, as compared with a boathouse, which is a kind of house). The left-hand member is the modifier. In transparent cases such as morphology article the meaning of the whole is derived from the meanings of the components (though the precise meaning is indeterminate and depends on the context of use).

There is an important distinction in many languages between compounds and phrases. In many cases the difference is obvious. In a hackneyed example such as blackbird as opposed to black bird the compound has stress on black, while the phrase is stressed on bird (in neutral contexts at least). Moreover, a black bird is necessarily black, while a blackbird is a particular species of bird whatever its colour (female blackbirds are brown, for instance). This means that the semantics of this compound is non-compositional, i.e. we can’t determine the meaning of the whole just from the meanings of the parts. The semantics of phrases (idioms apart) is compositional. The difference can be illustrated syntactically as in (2, 3) (making very conservative assumptions about syntactic structure):

This is the standard story, though there are interesting subtleties. For instance, there is no way of determining the syntactic category of the modifier in blackbird, because it is fixed as part of the compound and can’t be subjected to any of the morphological or syntactic manipulations that real adjectives can. Thus, compare (4) and (5):

Pictures 2 -3 

Moreover, black doesn’t mean “black” in blackbird (because a blackbird doesn’t actually have to be black). Thus, the modifier black has neither category nor meaning; it just has a bare morphophonological shape. Therefore, (3) should be rewritten as (6):

The point is that blackbird is a lexicalized compound whose internal structure is only of historical significance, unlike a non-lexicalized coinage such as morphology article. In time, with changes in pronunciation, even this historical structure becomes opaque. Thus, husband is derived etymologically from (modern) “house” and “bond,” but it isn’t recognized as a compound by anyone except students of Middle English. Nonetheless, noun + noun compounding is a fully productive process in English. Simplifying somewhat, we can say that a process is productive if it applies freely in principle to all the lexemes of the language of the relevant type, allowing new forms to be created at will even if they have never been used before. Such processes therefore have to be semantically regular, without any lexicalized idiosyncrasy of meaning, otherwise, hearers would have no way of knowing what a new coining was supposed to mean (see Aronoff andnshen 1998, for more detailed discussion). The meaning of such compounds is admittedly vague: a morphology article is an article which has some connection with morphology. On the other hand, adjective + noun compounds aren’t productive and there are virtually no verb + noun compounds (there is a tiny handful of exceptions like swearword and drawbridge).

A variety of types of productive compounding are known in the languages of the world. A particularly interesting type, which has been the subject of some debate in recent years, is that known as noun incorporation (see Mithun 1984). In noun incorporation we see an alternation in which the direct object of a verb may form a compound with that verb. In (7) we see two examples from Chukchee (a member of a small language group spoken in northeast Siberia):

Pictures

In (7a) the subject pronoun is in the ergative case (the case used to mark the subject of a transitive sentence), while the object is in the absolutive case. Being transitive, the verb agrees with both the subject and the object. In (7b) the root of the object noun has formed a compound with the verb root. This renders the verb intransitive, so it agrees solely with the 1st person subject. The subject pronoun is now in the absolutive case, the case used for intransitive subjects. Finally, notice that the 1sg prefix comes to the left of the incorporated noun root and the vowels of the root have changed. This is due to vowel harmony, under which the “weak” vowel /i/ is changed to /e/ when there is a “strong” vowel elsewhere in the word (e.g. the /o/ of pojgr). Vowel harmony only operates within a word, and this helps us identify the incorporative complex as a single word form morphologically. Examples (7a, b) differ slightly in emphasis but are otherwise synonymous. Thus, it is clear that pojgr still realizes the “spear” lexeme even when it is compounded. Noun incorporation is completely productive in Chukchee, with very few restrictions.

Turning to derivation, the nouns writer, painter, walker are clearly related to the verbs write, paint, walk, meaning roughly “person who writes, paints, walks,” by suffixation of -er. I shall call these subject nominals. It is customary to treat write and writer as distinct lexemes related by derivation, rather than word forms of a single lexeme. For instance, writer is a noun, while write is a verb. The morphological operations which realize derivation (such as -er affixation) may or may not be regular and productive. Thus, apply has a subject nominal applic-ant, with irregular suffix -ant added to an irregular form of the root, applic-. I discuss derivation in more detail in section 3.1.

As a verb lexeme, write has its own set of grammatical words expressed by the forms write, writes, writing, wrote, written. Similarly, writer has its own set of forms: writer, writers. These grammatical words are the inflected forms of the lexeme and the process of constructing inflected forms is known as inflection (“inflectional morphology”). The meanings of the inflected form are predictable (plural of noun, past tense of verb, or whatever), while the shape of inflected forms is generally determined by affixation to the stem form of the lexeme. The stem consists of the root and any derivational affixes. In morphologically complex languages a given lexeme might have several stems for different types of inflection (for example, all verbs may have separate present tense and past tense stems). Irregularity, either in the stem or the affix, is not uncommon. Thus, knife has the irregular stem form knive- in the plural (knives), while ox has the irregular suffix -en (oxen). Irregularity of form can be complete as in total suppletion, when one inflected form bears no shape relation to the rest of the paradigm (e.g. went as the past tense of go). Where there is still some overlap we talk of partial suppletion (as in brought ~ bring, where the first two consonants are identical). Even where the shapes are irregular, the past tense meaning is exactly the same as it is for any other verb, whether irregular (such as write ~ wrote, bring ~ brought, go ~ went) or regular (e.g. scribble ~ scribbled).

Inflections express grammatical or functional categories. The inflectional system organizes the forms of words into systematic groupings or paradigms. There are essentially two sorts of function subserved by inflection. Many inflections signal an aspect of meaning which is grammaticalized, such as number (singular vs. plural) or tense. This means that the words of a given class obligatorily signal the grammatical distinction: thus, all verbs in English have to have a past tense (even if these are not actually distinct forms, as in put). Booij (1994) refers to this as inherent inflection.

One typical inherent inflection for nouns is case, in which the grammatical or semantic role of a noun in a sentence is shown by its form. In Russian a noun generally has distinct forms for the subject, direct object or indirect object:

(8) Len -a dala Ir -e knig -u

Lena-NOMINATIVE gave Ira-DATIVE book-ACCUSATIVE

“Lena gave Ira a book.”

Lena, Ire, knigu in (8) are case-inflected forms of the lexemes lena, ira, kniga. Verbs exhibit much greater variety in their inflectional systems. Two common inherent inflections are tense and aspect. Tense refers to anchoring in time, as with English wrote (past) as opposed to writes (non-past – present or future reference). A given language may distinguish a number of different tenses (such as recent vs. remote past) or no tense at all. Aspect refers to the manner in which an event unfolds over time. A very common aspectual distinction is that between completed (perfective) and non-completed (imperfective) events. In Slavonic languages most verbs have separate perfective and imperfective paradigms, e.g. op’isat’ (perf.) ~ op’isivat’ (impf.) “describe” (see also section 3.2). Many languages have very rich aspectual markings modifying the meaning of the base verb in very subtle ways. Below is just a small selection of the fifteen aspectual affixes described for Chukchee by Skorik (1977: 179–202):

(9) -l?et prolonged continuous action:

?@tt?e ninepièku-lqet-qin . . . ott@lg@n

dog jump-ASP-3/3 stick

“The dog jumped over the stick over and over again.”

(10) -cir prolonged interrupted action:

. . . èinqejmuri n?ejèew-cir-muri jaral?a

us.children called-ASP-1plOBJ people.at.home

“The people at home kept calling us children.”

(11) -cit / -cet alternating action:

. . . natc@-cet-qenat . . .

hide-ASP-3plSUBJ

“They played at hide-and-seek”

(12) -sk@cet accelerated action:

q@nwer è@to-sqrcat-g?e g@mnin t@letumgin

at last come.out-ASP-3sgSUBJ my companion

“At last my companion sprang out”

More than one of these can be combined:

(13) m@t-ra-t@la-tenmaw@-pl@tko-èèo-g?a

1pl-FUT-GRADUALLY-prepare-FINISH-BEGIN-FUT

“we will begin to gradually finish the preparations”

Other types of verb inflection include mood (whether a statement is presented as fact, possibility, hypothetical situation and so on) such as the subjunctive mood of Romance languages, the optative expressing a wish (e.g. Ancient Greek), imperative for issuing commands, and interrogative, a special set of verb forms used for asking questions (e.g. the Eskimo languages). Many language groups signal polarity (negation) inflectionally (Bantu, Turkic, Athapaskan, and others). It is very common for a given inflectional morpheme to signal a complex mixture of tense, aspect, mood, and polarity.

Any of the above functional categories can be expressed syntactically, by word order or by function words such as the English aspectual auxiliaries (has been reading). One purely morphological type of inherent inflection is inflectional class: declensions for nouns and adjectives and conjugations for verbs. Which noun or verb goes in which class is in general arbitrary. Russian nouns can be put into four main declensions depending on the inflections they take (though different descriptive traditions distinguish different numbers of declensions):

Pictures 

(The symbol ’ represents palatalization. Consonants are always palatalized before /e/. The case names are traditional and represent a variety of syntactic functions.) I have given two subtypes of class I nouns, one animate the other inanimate. In the inanimates the accusative case is always the same as the nominative, while in the animates the accusative takes the form of the genitive. This type of situation, in which parts of a paradigm are systematically identical, is known as syncretism. There are other syncretisms here, too. For instance, the dative, instrumental and prepositional plural endings are the same for all classes, that is, the class feature is neutralized and there is effectively a single set of endings for the whole of the class “noun.” On the other hand, the behavior of pairs such as “law” and “boy” require us to set up a covert category of animacy for Russian, which never has any direct expression (there is no form which has a suffix identifiable as the “animacy” suffix) but which is nonetheless part of the inflectional system. Note that it is the property “animacy” which is covert, not the accusative case. We know this because class II nouns have a separate accusative, in the singular at least (see Corbett and Fraser 1993, for more detailed discussion of the implications of these data).

Russian verbs inflect so as to indicate the person and number of their subject (see below on “agreement”) as well as for tense and occur in two main conjugations (together with a plethora of minor variations on each of these classes): 

Pictures

As can be seen, the endmost suffixes are common to both classes, except in 1sg, 3pl forms. Both types have a special stem forming suffix, -aj- and -irespectively, and class I has in addition a “linking vowel” -o-. The -aj/-i formatives are found throughout the inflectional system of the verbs. The other role of inflection is to realize the syntactic functions of agreement and government. This is what Booij (1994) calls contextual inflection, because it is determined by the syntactic context in which the lexeme is used. In many languages a verb must agree with its subject and / or object, by cross-referencing various of their properties. This occurs marginally in English for third person non-past verb forms: Harriet writes vs. the girls write. In Chukchee transitive verbs agree with both the subject and the object, in rather complex ways. The system for one of the six tense forms in the indicative mood is shown in Morphology 221

(16) (see Muravyova 1998; empty cells represent non-existent forms in which

the subject and object would have the same person features):

Pictures 

The verb references the person and number both of the subject and of the object, though there is no simple relationship between many of the affixes and their functions. Thus, although the prefixes tr- and mrt- clearly meaning “1sg/1pl subject” respectively, the prefix na- seems to mean “3pl subject” or “3sg subject with 2nd person object or 1pl object” and the suffix -nen seems to mean “3sg object but only if the subject is 3sg.” One consequence of this is that some forms correspond to more than one subject–object pairing, e.g. napelagrt, which means either “3sg leaves 2sg (s/he leaves thee)” or “3pl leaves 2sg (they leave thee).” The system proves to be even more complex than this when the full set of tenses, moods, and voices is taken into account. Patterns such as this are typical of languages with rich agreement systems, and such data have been instrumental in changing the views of linguists about the nature of the morpheme.

Adjectives often agree with the nouns they modify. This is extremely marginal in English, only being found for this and that (this / that cat vs. these / those cats). In Russian, however, an adjective agrees with its noun in number and case:

Pictures 

It might be thought that the adjective agrees in declension, but this is wrong. All nouns in Russian have one of three genders, masculine, feminine, or neuter. Male and female humans are masculine and feminine respectively and for other nouns gender depends largely on declensional class. Members of class I are masculine, those of classes II, III are feminine and those of class IV are neuter. However, there are certain exceptions. Thus, the word muokina “man” belongs to class II, yet it is masculine: bol’moj muokina “big man.” As is stressed by Aronoff (1994), gender is an essentially syntactic property, which governs agreement. Declension class is a purely morphological property which the syntax has no direct access to. Aronoff points out that the existence of arbitrary inflectional classes is one of the prime motivations for treating morphology as an autonomous linguistic module.

We have seen that a direct object in Russian is in the accusative case. This can be thought of as an instance of government: a transitive verb governs the accusative. Likewise, prepositions in Russian have to take specific cases, as shown in (19):

Pictures 

Notice how “motion towards” as opposed to “location at” is signaled solely by case choice in (19b, c), otherwise, it is an arbitrary matter which preposition governs which case. One of the perennial theoretical problems in morphology is whether there is a clear-cut distinction between inflection and derivation and if so how to draw it. Inflection is often thought to be “of relevance to syntax,” which is clearly true of contextual inflection, but not so obvious with inherent inflection. Yet we don’t want to say that plurals or past tenses are derivational and hence create new lexemes. Booij’s contextual / inherent distinction is designed to ameliorate this problem (though we are now left with the task of distinguishing inherent inflection from derivation). A typical borderline case is that of the aspectual forms of Chukchee given above. Chukchee has a set of six tense-aspect forms in which aspect (roughly perfective vs. imperfective) is Morphology 223grammaticalized and expressed as part of the obligatory conjugation system.

However, the affixes illustrated in (9–13) are not like this. Rather, they are optional elements which are added to modify the overall meaning of the verb.Does this make them derivational, then? Do we wish to say that “to verb in a prolonged interrupted fashion” is a new lexeme related to verb (derivation) or a form of the word verb (inherent inflection)? Cases like this are quite common and promise to provide fertile ground for future research into the problem.

The Lexeme Concept

The lexeme concept

If we ask how many words are listed in (1) we can give at least two answers

(1) {cat, cats}

In one sense there are obviously two, but in another sense there is only one word, cat, and only one entry will be found in a dictionary for it. The plural, cats, is formed by a completely general rule from the singular form cat and there is no need to record the plural form separately. In addition, we can describe cat as “the singular form of the word cat” and cats as “the plural form of the word cat.” This gives us another interpretation for the term “word,” as becomes clear when we look at the word “sheep.” Here the singular form of the word sheep has exactly the same shape as the plural form, even though these are distinct linguistic entities. Given the vagaries of English orthography, this identity of shape can be true of the spoken form, the written form, or both (as with “sheep”). Thus, the written shape of the base form of the verb “read” (pronounced like “reed”) is identical to that of the past tense, “read” (pronounced like “red”) despite the difference in pronunciation, while the taxes, the tax’s (“of the tax”) and the taxes’ (“of the taxes”) differ solely in spelling.

It is rather useful to have different terms for these three different senses of the word “word.” We will therefore say that there is a lexeme cat which has two word forms, cat and cats. The names of lexemes are conventionally written in small capitals. The grammatical description “the singular / plural of cat” is a grammatical word. Thus, sheep is one word form corresponding to one lexeme, but it is two grammatical words (the singular and the plural of sheep).

We can think of a lexeme as a complex representation linking a (single) meaning with a set of word forms, or more accurately, linking a meaning with a set of grammatical words, which are then associated with corresponding word forms. From the point of view of the dictionary (or lexicon), this is therefore a lexical entry. There is no demand here that the set of forms correspond to only one meaning, or that only one set of forms correspond to a given meaning. If several forms correspond to one meaning we have pure synonymy: e.g. {boat, boats}, {ship, ships}. If a single form corresponds to more than one completely unrelated meaning, as with {write, right, rite}, or {bank, bank} then we have homophony or homonymy. We then treat the homophones /homonyms as distinct lexemes which just happen to share the same shape (written and / or spoken). In some cases these meanings are felt as related to each other, and we have a case of polysemy. Thus, the word “head” means a body part, the person in charge of an organization, a technical term in linguistics, and so on, and these meanings are associated by some kind of metaphorical extension. In general, polysemy tends to be either ignored (where the meanings are close) or treated like homophony. 

In linguistics a form-meaning pair is a sign and the lexeme is a prototypical example of a sign. The traditional definition of morpheme is “the smallest meaningful component of a word,” and this entails that we consider all morphemes as signs. However, this turns out to be very controversial, for some types of morpheme, at least.

Morphology by Andrew Spencer

Morphology is about the structure of words. All languages have words and in all languages some words, at least, have an internal structure, and consist of one or more morphemes. Thus, the form cats comprises the root morpheme “cat” to which is added the suffix morpheme “s” indicating plural. Now, for this characterization to mean anything we have to know what a word is. How do we know, for instance, that a string such as the cat is two separate words, and that the is not a prefix? Conversely, how do we know that the “s” of cats isn’t a word in its own right. Here we need the help of syntax: the cat is a phrase which can be extended by addition of other phrases: the very black cat. The form cats can never be split up this way, the reason being that the “s” component is an element which can only exist as part of a word, specifically at the end of a noun. In other words, “s” is a suffix and hence a bound morpheme. The property of indivisibility exhibited by cats is lexical integrity. A single word such as cats contrasts rather neatly with the fully fledged (but synonymous) phrase more than one cat, in which it is clear that more, than, and one are all independent words and can all be separated by other words or phrases. 

This chapter will examine the different structures words exhibit and the morphological relationships they bear to each other, and the nature of the morpheme. We begin by clarifying the notion “word” itself.

Why it’s called “Aceh”?

“a c e h” is known as a province in Indonesia (. There are different rumors and opinions about the name. Some Acehnese even jokes that ACEH is the abbreviation of Arabic, Chinese, Europe and Hindia. And of course, it cannot be taken as principal in scientific linguistics. What about old alphabetical spell (Atjheh)?

Still there are other histories about naming “aceh”:
Once upon a time, princess from Hindustan had lost and had been looked by her ancestors till they reached Sumatra Island. They arrived in ‘aceh land’ and found the princess. The ancestors then explained to the community who stayed in that island that the princess is their relative. Her brother, leader of the ancestors, reminded them again that the princess is his “aci”. The community replied the princess has good behavior, respective, and they thought she has aristocrat view.

The community then agreed to choose the princess role them as the king. And they were agree to give “aci” as name for that new kingdom. Time by time, “aci” was changed into ‘Acai’ and changed again into ‘aceh’ which mean the beautiful island.
According to Valentijn (1688), Aceh also come from “Acai” a Hindustani terminology, which mean ‘beautiful. This naming was coming from the visitors from India. They were overawed on the panorama in Aceh. They used to call “Acai”, “Acai”.
The following logical story may has possibility: “Aceh may come from name of tree or name of river”

The former community at their old age century usually known as nomadic. They move from one place to another place but not far from the river and also many trees. They know that water is the source of their life. Therefore, long time ago, “aceh” may be taken from a name of the river in this land. As we know there is a river in this area known as “Sungai Aceh” and still may be there is other “pohon Aceh”. This can have possibility that ‘Aceh’ may come from a name of the river and tree. May be, they had been trying to stay near ‘sungai Aceh’ river, build the houses, raising animals, growth the families and then creating a community.

The following names support that story such as name of lhokseumawe (lhok: depth of river water) and ‘seumawe’ semak+awe=rattan, other words such as lhoksukon (lhok: depth of river water and sukon),

In fact, exact meaning and scientific research about the history of naming the area as ACEH are not found yet. Naming based on the history above is only self-story based or exaggeration on story.

But at least man…we have story and what your??

De Crez

THE MORPHOLOGY OF NOUNS IN PAKPAK DAIRI

1.1 Background
Pakpak is a language spoken in the regent of Dairi in North Sumatra. The area borders with Lake Toba on the west side. The people call themselves Pakpak. Most of the pakpak are bilingual; they speak Pakpak as well as Indonesian. Pakpak is used especially in daily activities, in informal as well as formal occasion, for example in ceremonial party, wedding and other daily activities such as in household or social activities.

Although the area of Dairi surrounded by mostly Batak area, Pakpak is not Batak. Pakpak language is different from Batak. If one speaks Pakpak to a Batak, he will not understand it.
Pakpak language has three main dialect, those are Kelasen dialect (mostly used at North Tapanuli), Old Pakpak dialect (Dairi district) and Boang dialect (south east Aceh and Karo).
Social interaction between the society of Pakpak sets according to (marga) clan from father (patrilineal). There are five clans in Pakpak: Tambunan, Berutu, Manik, Bintang and Mungkur. Those five clans, again, have sub-clans which commonly added to the main clan. The children, male and female, follow the clan from their father. The female who has married will move to the clan of her husband.

Pakpak has three categorizations on their social interaction: (a) dengen sabeltek: all male in one/same clan. (b) beru: female (wife), husband, children, and family from husband, and (c) kula-kula: parents and family of wife. The characteristic of dengen sebeltek or dengen sabituka in the tradition is one word, togetherness in all activities in every activity regarding on that tradition.

The characteristic of beru is shown by respecting her kula-kula; they give rice or olis (traditional clothes) for kula-kula in traditional ceremony. Interaction in the Pakpak society is set by delikan si telu. It is a symbol of democracy.

Tokor beru is a terminology in wedding ceremony when someone gets married. A man has to give tokor beru to kula-kula, it can be as money, cows, gold or etc. A man who has not get married can not be accepted in the traditional ceremony as well. That is why, if he get married he has to learn more how to communicate with his older generation. This communication is called by “bertutur” (asking relationship of the family or marga/clan)

Most of the Pakpak are farmers, planting rice, growing coffee, vegetables and fruit, and some of them working as blacksmith. They sell their commodity to the market once a week.

Regarding on their religion, the Pakpak in early time believes in animism, many people at that time used black or white magic, believes to evils and devils. In the 19 century, Islam and catholic came to this area bringing Gods believes to them. Nowadays people in Pakpak has left their old believes and become a Moslem or Christian. Some of the old habit/ tradition are still left such as pepiher tendi (a party that aim to support someone’s success) and pengupah-upahen (food contribution) to the family or friends in traditional ceremony.

There has een very little research on Pakpak. Some previous research shown the existence of morphological process and morphophonemic rules in the language, for example: verb 'mengelabaŋ' which came from prefix me- and noun /labaŋ/ ‘nail’; the form of the word is changed from ‘me-‘ into ‘menge-‘. Then noun /pemekpek/ 'stick’ came from prefix pe- and verb /pekpek/ ‘hit’; in this process, the allomorph process occurs in the word /pekpek/ and changed into /pem-/.

Although morphophonemic process in Pakpak has been identified, but the system of its noun morphology has not give details explanation even in general. The information about its structures, morphological features, types, and formations of nouns in Pakpak are urgently required to be researched. Therefore the present research has focused on the morphology of nouns.

1.2 Problem of the Study
This research ‘The Morphology of Nouns in Pakpak is trying to find out the problems of study in the following:
- What are the characteristics of nouns in Pakpak?
- How are the morphological process of noun in Pakpak?
- How is the formation on nouns in Pakpak?
- What is the reduplications system of nouns in Pakpak?

1.3 Aims of the Study
According to the problems mentioned above, the aims of this research are:
· To describe characteristic of nouns in Pakpak
· To describe morphological process in Pakpak
· To describes formation of nouns in Pakpak
· To describe the reduplication of nouns in Pakpak

1.4 Significant of the Study
Based on the previous explanation on the background, the significances of the study from the research are:
- As source of information about this language
- A contribution to the bibliography of Pakpak

1.5 Organization of the Study

This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one deals with background (literature review to Pakpak language), problem, scope, significance, and the organization of the study. Chapter two deals with the review of literature relevant to morphology of nouns in Pakpak language in Dairi include short note of the sound system in Dairi. This chapter also describes the theories related to which this study concern about. Chapter three content of the research methodology which includes population and sample, location and procedure of collecting data. Chapter four presents result and discussion of nouns in Pakpak language in Dairi. The last, chapter five deal with the conclusion and suggestion

THE MORPHOLOGY OF ADJECTIVES IN KARONESE

1.2 Background
Karonese belongs to an ethnic group or tribe on highlands of North Sumatra, Indonesia. They live in Berastagi, Kabanjahe, Simpang Empat, Pancur Batu, and villages around them. The area is in North West region of Toba Lake which covers about 5.000 km wide. Astronomically the area is located between 30 and 30300 in north latitude and 980 in north longitude.
The area consists of two main parts:
The high land of Karo or Karo Gugung, covers all locations of Karo district with Kabanjahe as central administration of the district.
The low land of Karo or Karo Jahe, which covers some locations in other district such as Langkat and Deli Serdang.

The highland of Karo is the cultural centre of the Karonese. Therefore, the original language in this area is not much affected by other languages. The people use the language in all activities, especially cultural and daily occasions, the language is mostly used. In this area, the people live on agriculture, like planting vegetables, fruits, and rice for their consumption and their commercial commodity. Vegetables, fruits and rice are produced for domestic and export consumption.

The lowland people grow plants like rubber and oil palm. In this area the culture is very much influenced by Malay and also other cultures such as those of, Indian, Acehnese and Javanese. Lowland of Karo is close to Medan, North Sumatra. Their language is very much influenced by neighboring people. In fact, most young people use Indonesian in their daily communication.
Describing about general culture of Karonese, the clans are very important to the people. There are five clans in Karo, those are: Tarigan, Karo-Karo, Sembiring, Ginting, and Perangin-angin. Each of the clan is claimed to have been born from the king in tradition. However, there come again names to which a clan call the other clan. These names called Tutur Siwaluh: senina, turang, bapa, nande, bengkila, bibi and mama. Karo also has marital or family names to other family. It is known as Rakut Sitelu which contents of three names: Sembuyak, Kalimbubu and Anak Beru.

There is expectation slogan influenced daily activities in Karo. The slogan is Sura-sura pusuh peraten. This slogan is assumptions to their live, Tuah which means by requesting mercy and blessing from god, to have good generation. Sangap, balance in economy and livelihood. Mejuah-juah, which mean to have wealth, live in peace, spirit to work and balance between human to human, human to nature and human to god. All these three expectations is related one to another.

Although the Karonese are divided into clans, they speak one language, Karonese. Karonese consists of three main dialects: Karo Gunung-gunung dialect (west high land), Kabanjahe dialect (east high land) and Jahe-jahe dialect (low land of Karo)

There are more sub-dialects in Karonese according to certain aspects lexical or phonologycally. Sub-dialects commonly define from area of community or village such as Singalur Lau dialect, which spoken by people in Tiga Binanga, and Tiga Lingga; Cingkes dialect which spoken in Cingkes district and dialect Bintang Meriah which spoken by people around Kuta Buluh district. According to analysis of variations among main dialects and sub-dialects, geographically those dialects can be mapped by dividing it into two area, West Karo and East Karo. West Karo here includes Singalur Lau dialect, Tongkoh dialect, Jahe-Jahe dialect, and Tiga Panah dialect. East Karo includes Kabanjahe dialect, Bintang Meriah dialect, Payung dialect, and Simpang Empat dialect.

The features that differentiate the dialects are mostly found in phonology and lexical items. West Karo dialect, phonologically, has distinctive feature in derivation of vowel of the east Karo. Some of the differences are shown below.
East Karo : word with /u/ in final syllable
West Karo : word with /o/ in final syllable.
Examples:
/waluh/ ‘eight’ /wal h/
/kerahung/ ‘throat’ /kerahong/
/mbur/ ‘fat’ /mbor/

East Karo : word with /i/ in final syllable
West Karo : word with /o/ in final syllable.
Examples:

/siti ? / ‘little’ /sit? /
/kentisi? / ‘a moment’ /kenti?/
/malir/ ‘flow’ /maler/

There are words in East Karo content of /u/ or /e/ but found in West Karo with /i/.
Examples:
/meluhε/ ‘hungry’ /melihε/
/bentuha/ ‘rainbow’ /bentiha/
/ndeher/ ‘close’ /ndiher/

Diphthong in the final word in East Karo dialect found in monopthong in West Karo dialect.
Examples:
/ndiganai/ ‘when’ /ndiganε/
/jaun/ ‘corn’ /jon/
/ndauh/ ‘far’ /ndoh/

Some lexical features come with phonologic variation are:
/mberti? / ‘papaya’ /perti? /
/kiam/ ‘run’ /gian/
/tualah/ ‘coconut’ /talah/

Reduplication, morphologically, in East Karo dialect replaced in partial repetition in West dialect.
Example:
/gawahgawah/ ‘traveling’ /gagawah/

Base on this concept, there are still many current distinctive features found in other sub-dialect in Karo lexically or phonologically. For example, terminology of Karonese for grandfather and grandmother is ‘nini bulan’ and ‘nini tuduŋ’ according to East Karo. But West Karo dialect used in low land the terminology came into ‘bolaŋ’ and ‘nondoŋ’. East Karo tend to diphthongize final /e/ and / /. For example, [bage] ‘seems like’ [bagai] and [rim ] ‘orange’ [rim u]. Sub-dialect Singalur Lau which is used in Tiga Binanga and Tiga Lingga, has current characteristic, such as derivation of final /a/ into /e/ in [juma] ‘land’ [jume].

Generally, dissimilar dialect in Karo does not indicate misunderstanding between the utterances in their communication. The typical dialects give more appreciation to the speakers about area or region of Karo indeed. However, East Karo dialect seems to be more acceptable when searching for the standard of Karonese. This notion according to the reality that Kabanjahe is located in the middle of Karo area while in the other hand it also stands as a central commercial activities and the district of government activities. Regarding to the fact, the writer intents to have data of this study found based on the East Karo location dialect.

The published study of Karonese language writes about grammatical rules and linguistic patterns at general issues. This condition still remains complicated understanding about Karonese. Owing to the fact, the writer then start to give a detail view to adjective form in Karonese since adjective form becomes one of the important link in understanding a language. The writer admits that scientific discussion is crucially needed to keep this language exists in linguistic literature.

1.2 Problem

The adjective is the focus of this study. Therefore the problem can be formulated as follow:
How is the morphology of adjectives in Karonese?

1.3 Scope
The scope of study is limited to adjectives form in Karonese. This limitation aims to prevent bias or complicated understanding through other morphologic rules.

1.4 Aim
The aim of this study is obviously to find out how the morphology of adjective in Karonese is.

1.5 Significance
This study has contribution in supporting information about Karonese language especially adjective forms. On the other hand, it is also hoped to give literature references for those who concern their study in morphology. And simply, of course, give bibliography to enrich student in field of linguistics.

1.6 Organization
This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one deals with background (literature review to Karo include culture and language history), problem, scope, significance, and the organization of the study. Chapter two deals with the review of literature relevant to morphology of adjective in Karonese include short note of the sound system in Karonese. This chapter also describes the theories related to which this study concern about. Chapter three content of the research methodology which includes population and sample, location and procedure of collecting data. Chapter four presents result and discussion of adjective in Karonese. The last, chapter five deal with the conclusion and suggestion.