The Phenomena of Split-s and Fluid-s in Minangkabaunese: a Grammatical-typological Study

Minangkabaunese, a local language originally spoken by Minangkabaunese in West-Sumatera, has been typologically assigned as a nominative-accusative language (S = A, ≠ P) at syntactical level. Further typological studies on grammatical constructions, however, indicate that there are constructions which can be classified as the ergative-absolutive ones in this language. Thus, Minangkabaunese belongs to a neutral language, then. As a neutral language, it is assumed that this language has the constructions so called split-S and fluid-S. This paper, typologically discusses the grammatical properties of split-S and fluid-S in Minangkabaunese. The idea of this paper is derived and further developed based on a part of the research result conducted in 2013-2014. The data presented and discussed in this article were collected through a descriptive-qualitative research in the form the field research and library study. The analysis was based on the relevant theories of grammatical typology. The result of analysis tells that Minangkabaunese has the grammatical constructions which can be assigned as split-S and fluid-S. This typological discussion may add grammatical data and typological information into analyses on linguistic typology