The Verb “Memukul’ in the Balinese Language Dialect Spoken at Taro Village: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage Study

Abstract

The people living at Taro village speak the Balinese language
as their daily language. As the speakers of the Balinese
languge, they never neglect the speech order, as can be seen
from the fact that they still use the Balinese words, which in the
modern era, have been neglected, resulting in the fact that many
people are not familiar with a number of words, especially
those which belong to the verb word class, one of which is the
verb “ngetok” (hit). The Balinese language has a great number
of verbs; however, the current study only analyses the verb
“ngetok’ (hit) using the theory of Natural Metalanguage
Semantics (NMS). The verb “ngetok” (hit) has a great number
of equivalents; they are ngebug, ngedig, nigtig, ngupek,
megambel, mugpugin, mukpukin, ngukul, nungting, ngempug,
nyakcak, noktok, ngeplokin, nebuk, ngaasin, nepung, ngintuk,
ngalocok, namplak, nyemés, nempéléng, nyagur, nyepédin,
nglamet, ngamplongin, ngamplengin, ngemplangin,
nglentangin, ngaplekin, nyontok, nylimed and mentil. One verb
is different from another, although they are all used to express
the action of hitting something or someone, depending on what
tool is used to hit and the subject and object which are hit. The
verb “ngetok” (hit) in the Balinese language has two different
meanings; namely doing something and taking place, which can
be explained using the explication technique in which it is
described that “X does something on Y, causing something
either bad or good to occur to Y”. Such differences in meaning
can be obtained through the analysis of the original meaning
using the non-compositional polysemy.