Double Deictic Systems in Sasak Demonstratives: Noble versus Common Language

Abstract

This paper aims at comparing two deictic systems of demonstratives used in the noble and common language of the Sasak language. These languages have a different deictic system but are used in the same community. The data were collected via participation observation and interview. The instrument used is the questionnaire on demonstratives developed by Eric & David Wilkins. The data are analyzed via an interactive model, which consists of three steps- data reduction, data display and data verification. This study results that the noble language has a two-way distinction of demonstrative, and the common language has a three-way distinction. In communication between the noble people and the common ones, the two-way distinction is mostly used to honor the status of the noble speaker, so the distal concept in the two-way system of noble demonstrative covers the concept of the three-way system in common demonstrative of Sasak language. Syntactically, noble demonstratives in the Sasak language have five types, namely, pronominal, adnominal, identification, location and verbal. These syntactic categorizations are significantly different compared to the common Sasak demonstratives.