Lexeme Formation of Kinship Greetings in the Pasemah Dialect

Abstract

Bengkulu is a province located on the west coast of Sumatra,
which has six regional languages with nine different dialects. The most
widely used dialect is the Serawai-Pasemah dialect, which has more
than 400,000 speakers and is spread across various areas in Bengkulu
Province to South Sumatra Province. This Serawai-Pasemah dialect is
part of the Malayic dialect, whose hallmark is a unique greeting system
because it is used to respect and show close kinship. A greeting is a set
of words, morphemes, phrases, or expressions to greet or start a
conversation. This study focuses on lexeme formation on kinship
greetings and is limited to the Pasemah dialect. The research design is
descriptive qualitative. The data source is three informants who are
native speakers of the Pasemah dialect. Using the content analysis
technique, the research results show that the lexemes formation in
Pasemah kinship greetings is found only in affixation, clipping,
compounding, and reduplication.