← Back

Nouns, Plurals & Classifiers

No grammatical gender, plural formed by reduplication, and classifier words (kata penggolong)
Reduplikasi penuh vs sebagian vs berima
Full vs partial vs rhyming reduplication
sayur-mayur
Three distinct reduplication patterns with different functions
Kata penggolong opsional dalam bahasa santai
Classifiers are optional in modern colloquial Indonesian
unlike Vietnamese
A key contrast with Vietnamese's obligatory classifier system
Kata penggolong lebih umum dalam ragam formal/tulisan
Classifiers are more common in formal/written Indonesian
-
Register strongly affects how often classifiers appear
Nominalisasi dengan pe-, ke-...-an
Nominalization with pe-, ke-...-an prefixes
pekerja, kehidupan
Derivational affixes turn verbs/adjectives into nouns
Struktur frasa nomina: nomina + adjektiva + penunjuk
Noun phrase structure: noun + adjective + demonstrative
-
A fixed ordering within the Indonesian noun phrase
Ketakrifan tanpa artikel
Definiteness conveyed by word order and context, not articles
-
Indonesian has no words equivalent to "a/the"
Integrasi kata benda serapan
Loanword nouns from Sanskrit/Arabic/Dutch integration
-
Borrowed nouns adapt smoothly into native noun-phrase structure
sang/si
honorific/informal noun markers
sang RAH-ja, see BOO-dee
Sang Raja (the King) vs si Budi (informal "that Budi")
ke-...-an untuk kata benda abstrak
Abstract noun formation with ke-...-an
keindahan (beauty)
A circumfix that derives abstract nouns from adjectives
Pergeseran makna dan tekanan pada kata majemuk
Compound noun stress and meaning shifts
-
Some compounds develop meanings not obvious from their parts