Morphological Description of Affixation Process in The Dayak Bentian Language
Abstract
This paper presents a brief morphological description of the affixation processes in the Dayak Bentian Language (DBL), a minority language at risk of extinction in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. To this end, the paper explores the affixation processes, including the form, function, and meaning of affixes and their morphophonemic processes. The data for this research consists of recorded oral language samples from the Dayak Bentian ethnic group in audio and video formats, which are then transcribed orthographically and phonemically with the assistance of native speakers through the use of ELAN and FLEX software. The annotated data was analyzed qualitatively to identify and categorize affixes, as well as to examine their attachment patterns and grammatical roles within sentences. The findings reveal that affixes in DBL include prefixes, infixes, suffixes, and compound affixes. Several prefixes and their allomorphs identified in DBL include {Nə-}, {mə-}, {sə-}, {bə-}, {bəkə-}, {pə-}, {kə-}, {də-}, and {tə-}. The language also features two infixes, {-ən-} and {-ər-}, as well as three compound affixes: {pə-+-ən-}, {kə-+-ən-}, and {tə-+-ən-}. Additionally, there is one suffix, {-an}. These affixes are generally categorized as inflectional and derivational, with the prefix {bə-} and the suffix {-an} being specifically derivational. The inflectional affixes are related to verb affirmation, reciprocal actions, passivation, and imperatives without altering the linguistic identity of the modified words. The phoneme changes resulting from morpheme junctions in DBL are limited to a few processes, primarily regressive nasal assimilation, phoneme retention, elision, insertion, and phoneme weakening through palatalization.