The Atypicality of Predicates with Two Explicit Arguments in Indonesian Conversation

Abstract

While transitive clauses with a subject and object have long been a fundamental focus of grammatical analyses across languages of the world, more recently, it has become apparent that naturally occurring language-in-use is in fact overwhelmingly intransitive and transitive clauses with two arguments have a relatively low frequency. In this study, I examine conversational Indonesian and focus on one construction type, a transitive predicate with two explicit core arguments. This grammatical configuration is considered atypical due to its very low frequency in conversational interaction. The goal of the study is to begin to understand when and why expressions of this type appear. It is found that these atypical configurations regularly occur at points where there is a change in footing, including changes in topic, participation framework, or referentiality. It is further shown that the contrast between explicit and unexpressed arguments in Indonesian conversational grammar contributes to the reasons why predicates elaborated with two arguments tend to appear when there is a change in footing.

1. Introduction

While transitive clauses with a subject and object have long been a fundamental focus of grammatical analyses across languages of the world, more recently, it has become apparent that naturally occurring language-in-use is in fact overwhelmingly intransitive and transitive clauses with two arguments have a relatively low frequency (Thompson & Hopper, 2001). In this study, I examine conversational Indonesian and focus on one construction type, a transitive predicate with two explicit core arguments. This grammatical configuration is considered atypical due to its very low frequency in conversational interaction. The goal of the study is to begin to understand when and why expressions of this type appear, what role these atypical constructions play during conversation, and how they contrast with more common predicate configurations that tend to have only one, or most frequently, no explicit arguments.

In this article, I will first outline two key concepts that will be useful in the subsequent analysis, footing (Goffman, 1981) and scalar Transitivity (Hopper & Thompson, 1980). I will then provide background on Indonesian grammatical structures, explaining conventional descriptions of Indonesian clauses before taking a closer look at Transitivity using conversational data. This will lead to an approach in which I do not consider clauses per se but rather predicates and the way they may or may not be elaborated with explicit arguments. After establishing that a predicate with two explicit arguments is a configuration that is atypical on the grounds of frequency, I will take a closer look at examples of their deployment and show that their use can be understood in terms of changes in footing. The article will conclude with a discussion of why this atypical configuration of predicate plus two arguments might be usefully deployed at instances where change in footing occurs, while also rarely occurring during sequences where footing is relatively stable.

2. Method

This study examines a corpus of audio recordings and transcripts of conversational Indonesian recorded in Indonesia in 2014. They range in length from seven minutes to thirty-three minutes and involve from two to five speakers, including all-female conversations and mixed male–female conversations. All the participants were young adult speakers, ranging in age from 18 to 25, with all having attained at least secondary education and many attending or recently completing tertiary education. All recordings were made with the informed consent of the participants and transcripts are presented using pseudonyms. Transcripts are segmented into intonation units using the conventions of Du Bois et al. (1993).

3. Conceptual Background

3.1. Footing

Goffman’s (1981) notion of footing in interaction will be useful as we examine the contexts in which Indonesian speakers use elaborated transitive predicates. Goffman (1981) provides a number of examples of interactions in which participants’ roles and their stances towards each other and the interactional business at hand shifts. He introduces the term footing to refer to the situation when a “participant’s alignment, or set, or stance, or posture, or projected self is somehow at issue” (Goffman, 1981, p. 128). Changes in footing are ubiquitous during interaction and can range from major changes in stance to minor alterations of tone. In any case, “a change in footing implies a change in the alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utterance” (Goffman, 1981, p. 128). These changes in footing occur between segments of talk that Goffman describes as “substantially sustained episodes” (Goffman, 1981, p. 128), during which footing remains more or less stable for a period of interaction.

In his discussion, Goffman’s (1981) main focus is on production format and participation framework and how shifts in these are central to shifts in footing. Production format concerns the roles involved when an utterance is produced, and the way in which what is said may be attributed to the speaker or to other, possibly non-present, people. The animator is the person who actually produces the speech. The author is the person whose words are spoken. The principal is the person who is committed to what is said. While the speaker will often embody all these roles simultaneously, in various circumstances, these roles may be occupied by different people. For example, a spokesperson may be the animator of words written by another person—the author—while the principal would be the person or organization that the speaker and writer work for. In casual conversation, reported speech in the context of stories is a prototypical case where words are spoken by a participant in the conversation acting as the animator, but the roles of author and principal are attributed to characters in the narrative. Other contexts may involve different, complex configurations of the production format. Participation framework involves the roles of the hearer in conversation and includes a number of different relationships. The most notable distinctions are between addressed and unaddressed hearers and between ratified participants, who are accepted as involved in an interaction, and unratified participants, who may be present and can hear what is happening but are not considered part of the interaction. Goffman (1981) discusses further refinements and complications of the participation framework. Configurations of production and participation shift in the course of conversation and are associated with shifts in footing.

While Goffman’s framework for understanding production and participation might at first glance look like a typology of roles, Goodwin and Goodwin point out that participation in fact involves “practices through which different kinds of parties build action together by participating in structured ways in the events that constitute a state of talk” (C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 2004, p. 225, emphasis in the original). Footing is a useful way of grasping what is happening as participants engage in collaborative social actions. And it is useful to remember that while participation framework and production format are closely linked to footing, so too are things like stance, tone, and topic. All these things can be in dynamic flux during interaction, and Goffman points out that a linguistic, and not just sociological, perspective needs to be involved in order to “open up the possibility of finding some structural basis for even the subtlest shifts in footing” (Goffman, 1981, p. 147).

We will next examine transitivity in Indonesian before taking a closer look at atypical transitive constructions in conversation and how their use can be understood in terms of shifts in footing.

3.2. Transitivity

Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) seminal analysis of scalar Transitivity in discourse contrasts with conventional approaches to transitivity that are more structurally focused. Conventional approaches to transitivity generally class verbs (and the clauses these verbs occur in) into two (or more) categories based on the number of core arguments that the verb takes. Verbs that take a single core argument, and the clauses they occur in, are intransitive, while verbs that take two (or more) core arguments, and the clauses they occur in, are transitive (or ditransitive). Instead of making a categorical, structural, binary distinction, Hopper and Thompson (1980) argue that when we look at naturally occurring discourse data, it becomes clear that Transitivity1 forms a multiplex continuum. As a scalar phenomenon, Transitivity involves a number of parameters, which, when taken together, allow us to talk about instances of verb and clause usage in discourse as being higher or lower in Transitivity. The parameters of Transitivity presented by Hopper and Thompson (1980) are as follows: participants, kinesis, aspect, punctuality, volitionally, affirmation, mode, agency, affectedness of O, and individuation of O. Note that the first parameter, the number of participants, refers to roughly the same characteristic that forms the basis of the conventional understanding of transitivity. When taken together, these parameters allow us to obtain a scalar view of Transitivity such that it is possible for a conventionally intransitive clause with one participant to be higher in scalar Transitivity than a conventionally transitive clause with two participants, for example, when a one-argument clause represents a punctual, realis event where the S acts volitionally compared to a two-argument clause that is irrealis, with an undifferentiated and unaffected O.

I begin the discussion below with a summary of the conventional understanding of transitivity in Indonesian grammar, which is based on the number of arguments and does not take into account the multi-parameter nature of scalar Transitivity. In the ensuing discussion of transitivity in colloquial Indonesian conversation, I will first make a comparison with the conventional approach by focusing on the first parameter, the number of participants. In this discussion, I will use the term “argument” for what Hopper and Thompson (1980) call participants in a clause, in order to avoid confusion with participants in conversational interaction. The discussion will then be developed in relation to the common practice among Indonesian speakers of often not mentioning arguments explicitly. I will then zoom in and look at one specific type of construction, a transitive predicate with two explicit arguments, which will be shown to be highly atypical of language use in Indonesian conversation. In the ensuing discussion of these elaborated predicates, I will then begin a deeper dive into footing and scalar Transitivity as a way of understanding when and why speakers use these atypical constructions.

4. Transitivity and Indonesian Predicates in Conversational Interaction

In this section, I will introduce Indonesian predicates and their relationship to what might be commonly characterized as clauses. I then show that Indonesian conversational language is highly intransitive. I will also show that predicates with two explicit arguments occur very infrequently and can thus be considered highly atypical of predicate usage. This leads to the key research question of this paper; if predicates with two arguments are so atypical, why do speakers use them?

4.1. A Conventional Description of Clauses in Indonesian

In its chapter on clauses, a frequently cited reference grammar of Indonesian presents the following as its first two examples of “basic clauses” (Sneddon et al., 2010, p. 241):

(1)	Anak-anak	itu	ber-main	di	pantai.
	child-redup	that	intr-play	on	beach
	‘The children were playing on the beach.’

(2)		Mereka	meny-(s)elenggara-kan2	penilitian	di	Aceh.
		3pl	av-undertake-appl	research	in	Aceh
	‘They undertook research in Aceh.’

With the conventional terminology commonly used to describe standard Indonesian3, Example (1) can be classified as an intransitive clause. Its verb main ‘play’ is marked by the intransitive (sometimes described as middle voice) prefix ber-. It has one core argument, the subject—anak-anak ‘children’—and an oblique argument marked with a preposition indicating location—di pantai ‘on the beach’. Similarly, Example (2) can be classified as a transitive clause. Its verb, menyelenggarakan ‘undertake’, is marked with the agentive voice (AV) prefix menN- and an applicative suffix -kan. It has two core arguments, mereka ‘3pl’—the subject—and penelitian ‘research’—the direct object. Among transitive clauses, Example (2) would also be sub-classified as an AV clause because the subject (or trigger) is the A argument of the clause, and consistent with this, the verb, as mentioned above, is marked with an AV prefix. AV clauses are also sometimes called active voice or A-trigger clauses.4

To complete the picture of the conventional understanding of clause structure in Indonesian, we will turn to a few more clause types. There are two types of patientive voice (PV, also sometimes called passive voice or P-trigger) clauses, illustrated here with examples from Sneddon et al. (2010, p. 259).

(3)	Surat	ini	harus	di-tandatangan-i	bapak.
	letter	this	must	pv-sign-appl	father
	‘Father must sign this letter.’

(4)	Buku-buku	ini	sudah	mereka	baca.
	book-redup	this	already	3pl	read
	‘They have read these books.’

In Example (3), the verb is marked with the PV prefix di- and the applicative -i, the P argument (surat ini ‘this letter’) is in subject position, and the A argument (bapak ‘father’) immediately follows the verb. In Example (4), the subject is the P argument (buku-buku ini ‘these books’) and the verb has no prefix, but it is immediately preceded by the A argument (mereka ‘3pl’), which is grammatically a proclitic, although it is written as a separate word in standard orthography. There is disagreement among linguists as to whether both PV clause types should be considered passive constructions in the traditional sense, fully transitive clauses like the AV construction, or have some other analysis. I follow Himmelmann (2005) and others by considering Indonesian to generally have a symmetrical voice system, where the AV and PV constructions are more or less similar in structural transitivity, unlike conventional active and passive clauses in languages like English. At the discourse level, a complex interplay of the referential features of arguments, including generality and tracking, feed into the choice of using AV or PV constructions at any given point, while there are grammatical constraints involved with certain types of embedded clauses.

In addition to verbal intransitive clauses, such as that in Example (1), Indonesian has non-verbal intransitive clauses. These generally have a non-verbal predicate juxtaposed with a subject. It is sometimes possible, but not common, to link the two elements with the formal copula adalah ‘cop’. The most frequent are duonominal constructions (Haspelmath, 2022), which usually have classificational or equational meanings, as shown in Examples (5) and (6) (Sneddon et al., 2010, p. 242). There are other non-verbal predicate types, such as those indicating quantity and location (or other relationships, often expressed prepositionally), as shown in Examples (7) and (8) (Sneddon et al., 2010, pp. 243, 246).

(5)	Dia	guru.
	3sg	teacher
	‘She is a teacher.’

(6)	Ini	keputusan	saya.
	this	decision	1sg
	‘This is my decision.’

(7)	Anaknya	lima.
	child-assoc	five
	‘His children are five’ (i.e., ‘He has five children’.)

(8)	Mereka	di	Jakarta	sekarang.
	3pl	in	Jakarta	now
	‘They are in Jakarta now.’

I have intentionally taken all of the previous examples from a reference grammar to illustrate what are conventionally considered “complete sentences” in standard Indonesian. One of the things that makes them “complete” in a conventional sense is that they all have explicit core arguments, that is, an explicit S argument in the case of the intransitive clauses and explicit A and P arguments in the transitive clauses. These have also been classified using conventional terminology as structurally intransitive, with one core argument, or transitive, with two core augments. In the following section, I aim to disrupt much of what has been conventionally said about clauses in Indonesian by examining predicate constructions as they are actually deployed by speakers in Indonesian conversation. My focus will be on predicates and the fact that arguments are rarely explicit in this kind of Indonesian language use.

4.2. Predicates, Arguments, and Clauses in Indonesian Conversation

If one of the hallmarks of standard Indonesian (especially as presented in grammar books) is the explicit expression of arguments in clauses, one of the hallmarks of colloquial Indonesian, especially in the context of spontaneous face-to-face interaction, is the frequent absence of explicit arguments. This proclivity for not expressing overt arguments, together with some other characteristics of the grammar of colloquial Indonesian, is illustrated in the following three examples taken from the conversational Indonesian data.

(9)	Dinda:	Gimana	mau	baca.
		how	fut	read
		‘How (am I) going to read (that form)?’

(10)	Asma:	Oh	jadi	di-bagi-in	gitu?
		oh	therefore	pv-share-appl	like.that
		‘Oh so (you) share (your cigarettes) is that it?

(11)	Salma:	Ya	udah,	hari	ini	main.
		yeah	already	day	this	hang.out
		‘Yeah okay (I’ll) hang out today.’

Example (9) contains the verb baca ‘read’ as well as the modal mau ‘want, will’ and the interrogative gimana ‘how’. There are no overt arguments or other nouns of any kind. The Indonesian verb baca, like English ‘read’, can be used when talking about reading some specific item and thus can be structurally transitive, or it can mean to engage in the activity of reading in general and thus can be structurally intransitive (see Example (12)). Out of context, we would not be able to say what the intention is here, but in the context of the conversation it occurred in, we know that Dinda is complaining that she cannot read a form that her friend wants her to look at. From this, we can understand that the speaker has herself in mind as the one who is (potentially) reading (the A argument) and that the form produced by her friend is what she may or may not be able to read (the P argument). Because these arguments are clearly alluded to in the context of the interaction, I classify this as a two-argument predicate. Also illustrated here is the common practice in colloquial Indonesian of using verbs without the nasal prefix meN- or N- ‘AV’ in AV predicates (Ewing, 2005; Sneddon, 2006). This contrasts with PV predicates, which regularly have di- ‘PV’ or a proclitic pronoun. Example (9) is thus categorized as AV, despite the lack of a verbal prefix.

Explicit arguments have been inserted in the English free translation in brackets to represent the sense of arguments implied but not expressed. I prefer to call this phenomenon allusive reference, rather than, say, ellipsis. Ellipsis implies that a word or phrase has been omitted, but I have argued elsewhere (Ewing, 2024) that there is no discourse or interactional evidence that anything has been omitted from an utterance like that in Example (9). Rather, the language produced is exactly as the speaker intends at the moment of utterance and what has been said in its context alludes to a certain reader and thing read, which the hearers may (or may not) be able to pick up on. The concept of allusion for this kind of implication comes from Goffman, who points out that alluding to unstated presuppositions “affirms relationships [and] organizes talk” (Goffman, 1983, p. 42). In terms of predicates and arguments, talk is organized through the informational, relational, and semantic implications and inferences that often allude to unmentioned referents.

Similarly, in Example (10), a predicate occurs without explicit arguments. The verb is in the PV form, marked with the PV prefix di- and colloquial applicative -in. Both A and P arguments are implied and so, as in Example (9), the predicate is classified as transitive. Asma is paraphrasing what her conversational partner has just said about how quickly he runs out of cigarettes, checking that she understands correctly, and so it is clear that she is alluding to what he does with his cigarettes, as shown with the bracketed arguments in the free translation. Example (11) has a predicate which typically takes only one core argument, main ‘play, hang out, go visiting’. In this case, Salma is responding to her friend’s complaint that Salma never spends time with her anymore, now that Salam has a new boyfriend. In this context, the predicate with no explicit argument can be understood to be what Salma is committing herself to do. It should be noted that not all cases of allusive reference are as clear as these. As discussed by Ewing (2019, 2024), indeterminacy often occurs, but in most cases, speakers seem to be comfortable with allusions that are clear enough for the conversational purposes at hand, without necessarily being unambiguously discernable.

In the study reported by Ewing (2019), using data from the same corpus used here, I identified predicates in a subset of data comprising 1500 IUs, and determined how many have no explicit core arguments, like Examples (9)–(11), and how many had at least one explicit core argument (without at that point making a distinction between transitive or intransitive predicates). The results are shown in

Table 1. Argument expression in conversation.

Argument Expression	N	%
Predicate, no explicit core arguments	464	66.5
Predicate, plus (some) explicit core argument(s)	234	33.5
TOTAL	698	100.0

. Predicates alone, with no explicit core arguments, make up two-thirds of the predicates in the sample, while only one-third have any explicit argument. The pervasiveness of allusive arguments in colloquial Indonesian suggests that the lack of an overt expression of arguments is the default and that speakers express arguments explicitly when some kind of special interactional or informational work is being performed. (This argument is developed further by Djenar et al., 2018, pp. 112–138.) Similar points have been made for Japanese (Nariyama, 2003), Korean (Oh, 2007), and Javanese (Ewing, 2014).

Having established that the predicate is the key building block of Indonesian colloquial grammar in conversational interaction, and that predicates most commonly occur with no overt arguments, we will now turn to Transitivity in the Indonesian conversational data. Thompson and Hopper (2001) have shown that English conversation is very low in Transitivity. In their study, they found that based on the structural criterion of the number of participants, one-participant clauses comprise 73% of clauses in their sample, while two-participant clauses comprise only 27% of clauses. The Indonesian data I have examined yield a similar distribution. Because English and Indonesian are structurally different in the ways clause-like constructions are produced by speakers, and because they are particularly different in the ways they utilize explicit and allusive arguments, the classification and counting need to be carried out a little differently as well. For the Indonesian data, I based the counts on predicates, grouping one-argument verbal and non-verbal predicates together (roughly equivalent to Thompson and Hopper’s one-participant clauses) and AV and PV predicates together as two-argument predicates (roughly equivalent to Thompson and Hopper’s two-participant clauses). When predicates do not have explicit arguments, a judgment was made based on contextual discourse evidence as to whether speakers are oriented toward some sort of referent when they produce a predicate without explicit arguments. For instance, in the discussion of Examples (9)–(11) above, a case was made based on the discourse context that it is clear the speakers were alluding to known referents. Thus, the predicates in Examples (9) and (10) are classified as transitive, while the predicate in (11) is intransitive. We can compare these to the following examples:

(12)	Andik:	Gua	juga	masih	baca.
		1sg	also	still	read
		‘I still read too.’

(13)	Mina:	Mereka	tau	kalau	kamu	bisa	main	gitar?
		3pl	know	that	2sg	able	play	guitar
		‘Do they know you can play guitar?’

In Example (12), the conversation is about how infrequently people read these days because of social media and the speaker is saying that he, like one of his interlocuters, in fact still reads. While the participants have discussed novels, newspapers, and other things people might read, here, it is clear that the speaker is talking about reading as an activity, not about reading some particular item. Thus, this instance of baca ‘read’ is classified as intransitive. This contrasts with Example (9), where the context makes it clear the speaker is talking about herself reading a particular form that the participants have been discussing, and baca ‘read’ is classified as transitive. With Example (13), the verb main ‘play’ is used in the sense of playing a musical instrument, in this case, a guitar, which is explicitly mentioned, and this instance of main ‘play’ is categorized as transitive.5 In contrast, in Example (11), main means something like ‘hanging out’, and if additional information is expressed (e.g., where or with whom), it is always in the form of a prepositional phrase and not something that could be understood as a P argument. Thus, main in Example (11) is classified as intransitive. As shown in

Table 2. Number of arguments.

Predicate Type	N	%
One argument (verbal and non-verbal)	597	85.5
Two arguments (AV an PV)	101	14.5
TOTAL	698	100.0

, 85.5% of the predicates in the data sample were classified as intransitive, while only 14.5% were classified as transitive, thus attesting to the overall low Transitivity of Indonesian conversation, similar to English conversation.

The goal of this article, in the context of the aims of this special issue, is to identify atypical constructions, and in that context, we can see that, consistent with the overall low Transitivity of Indonesian conversation, two-argument predicates are atypical relative to one-argument predicates, where atypicality is understood as low-frequency. Because allusive reference is widespread in Indonesian discourse, this phenomenon impacts how we view the (a)typicality of different predicate constructions. Focusing on two-argument predicates, we can ask how frequently core arguments are explicitly expressed.

Table 3. Elaboration of two-argument predicates.

Types of Elaboration	N	%
Predicate, no explicit A or P	34	33.7
Predicate + explicit A	3	3.0
Predicate + explicit P	40	39.6
Predicate + explicit A and P	24	23.8
TOTAL	101	100.0

shows the results from counts of explicit A and P arguments of two-participant predicates in the data sample. Here, we see that predicates with no explicit core arguments make up about one-third of transitive predicates, while predicates elaborated with only one core argument, whether A or P, make up 43% of transitive predicates.6 Transitive predicates elaborated with both explicit A and P arguments make up just under one-quarter of the transitive predicates.

When the frequency of the predicates elaborated with two explicit arguments (24 tokens, Table 3) is viewed relative to the overall number of predicates in the sample (698, Table 1 and Table 2) we see that they comprise only 3.4% (24/698) of the predicates in the sample. Thus, clause-like constructions with a transitive verb elaborated with two explicit core arguments, like those presented in conventional discussions of Indonesian grammar as ‘basic clause types’ (examples (2)–(4)), are in fact very rare in Indonesian speakers’ conversational practice. It is this scarcity in conversational data—in contrast to their frequency in conventional discussions of Indonesian grammar—which leads me to characterize the elaborated transitive predicates as atypical in the context of the natural everyday use of Indonesian. Nonetheless, the grammar of Indonesian clearly pays attention to these constructions in the form of voice and applicative affixes and certain constraints on word order. The question then arises, what are these construction types for—why do speakers need them, how do they use them—given their relative infrequency in discourse? Developing a preliminary answer to these questions is the focus of the remainder of this article.

In the data sample used for the counts presented above, only 24 predicates (3.4% of the total number of predicates) were elaborated with two core arguments. While this illustrates the rarity of this general type of construction, it does not provide many instances of interactional use from which to draw generalizations. In order to begin to understand what speakers might be doing with the elaborated transitive predicate constructions, I turned to a larger data sample, which comprised approximately 8700 IUs from the same set of recordings and transcripts that the smaller sample was taken from, as described above. This dataset yielded 94 transitive predicates with two overt core arguments. While this is still a relatively small number and will not allow for conclusive generalizations, it is sufficient to start giving us a sense of the contexts in which speakers deploy these constructions.

5. Results

The key finding is that elaborated transitive predicates occur when there is a change in footing. The following extracts from the conversational data illustrate changes in footing that involve changes in topic, changes in participation framework, and changes in referentiality. The final example illustrates a topic change in the context of previous and following sustained episodes. It is important to note that I am not claiming that elaborated transitive predicates signal a change in footing nor that they are necessary to indicate a change in footing, only that change in footing seems to be a place that is particularly conducive to their deployment. In the final section of the article, I will discuss potential reasons behind this.

Example (14) illustrates the use of elaborated transitive predicates when a new topic is introduced. In Example (14), Febri and Dinda are young women who are scrolling through their devices and commenting on various trends, songs, and memes they run across. They are particularly focused on K-Pop. In lines 993–994, Febri is commenting on Luhan, a Chinese K-Pop boy-band member. In lines 995–996, Dinda responds to something she has seen in a message, thus introducing an entirely new topic. She does this with the two-argument predicate temu ‘find, run across’, which is elaborated with explicate A saudara aku ‘my brother’ and P kura-kura ‘a turtle’. In terms of scalar Transitivity, this statement has some high transitivity characteristics—it is punctual, affirmative and realis—but also some low transitivity characteristics—non-volitional with minimal agency and an unaffected P. In terms of social action, it is not so much a reporting of events as an expression of disbelief at what she has seen, conveyed by the exclamation masa, something like ‘I can’t believe, how can it be true, impossible’, usually expressed about something that is in fact true. Interestingly, while the arguments in this statement are expressed quite explicitly and there is no allusive reference as such, the relevance of the statement—where it is coming from and what the point is—is not clear to Febri, who asks in line 994, maksudnya ‘(what do you) mean’? (Note that in line 997, Febri is answering her own question posed in line 994, before turning her attention to Dinda’s exclamation.) Dinda’s ensuing explanation, where she begins to tell what has happened, involves the following intransitive predicates: the locative di depan rumah ‘in front of the house’, the presentative ada ‘there was’, and the evaluation bodor ‘funny, cute’. Febri’s response in line 1003 is also the one-participant conjecture about the turtle, nyasar ‘lost’.

(14) Topic shift.7
993	Febri:	…(3.5) Luha=n, Luhan. Adu=h. ‘Luhan, Luhan. Gosh.’
994		…(2.2) Tadi mana ya? ‘Which one?’
995	Dinda:	Masa	saudara	aku,
		unbelievable	brother	1sg
		‘Unbelievable my brother,’
996		tiba-tiba	n-(t)emu	kura-kura	kaya	gini=.
		suddenly	av-find	turtle	like	that
		‘suddenly found a turtle like that.’
997	Febri:	…Itu tuh. ‘That one.’
998		…Maksudnya? ‘(What do you) mean?’
999	Dinda:	…Kura-kura di depan rumahnya, ‘A turtle in front of the house,’
1000		tiba-tiba ada kura-kura. ‘suddenly there was a turtle.’
1001		Bodor apa coba ‘Look (it was) so funny.’
1002	Febri:	@@@@@ LAUGHING
1003		<@ Nyasar kura-kuranya @>. ‘The turtle was lost.’
1004	Dinda:	Iya. ‘Yes.’

Example (15) also illustrates shifts, but here, they are not shifts in the general topic, but micro-shifts in the participation framework. Here, a group of women is sitting in a food court discussing different aspects of study and work at a university along with what it is they might want to order for lunch. There is a pause after Hana comments on the TOEFL test administered at their university (UPI or Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia ‘The Indonesian Education University’). Ratih then brings up the topic of ordering. In line 82, she says she will have the same thing Bunda is having. Rina then mentions that Aina chooses food well (line 86). Lina asks Aina what she ordered yesterday (line 88), then Aina says that she wants something with broth (line 95). Each of these comments is produced with a transitive predicate elaborated with two explicit arguments. Although high in Transitivity on the parameter of number of arguments, they are otherwise all relatively low in Transitivity on other parameters. Most of the verbs that comprise these predicates are low in kinesis: ikut ‘follow, do the same as someone else’, milih-milih ‘choose (repeatedly)’, and pengen ‘desire’. In most cases, the P is not affected. In the one case where P is affected (when the verb is makan ‘eat’), it is not individuated, and it is in fact part of an interrogative, with the P role filled by apa ‘what’. While these are generally low in overall scalar Transitivity, the fact that they have two explicitly expressed arguments plays an important role, as each speaker shifts to comment on what they themselves are thinking about regarding their choice of meal. They do this both in contrast to and in coordination with the others, as can be seen in line 82, with Ratih’s use of aku mah ‘as for me’ and her alignment with Bunda.

The referent of the A argument of the predicates in lines 86, 88, and 95 are all the same; one of the participants is named Aina, and in all three utterances, she is referred to by her name. But with each utterance, there is a change in footing through a change in the participation framework indicated by the relationships between Aina and the others. In line 86, Rina is making an observation to the group about Aina. In grammatical terms, we could say that the name Aina is being used for third-person reference, while within Goffman’s participation framework, we can understand that Aina, a person who is present but not being addressed at the moment, has the role of ratified overhearer. In line 88, the participation framework shifts as Lela addresses Aina directly, which is indicated with the vocative use of her name at the beginning of the utterance. The A argument of the predicate is Teh Aina ‘sister Aina’, which in grammatical terms would be second-person reference. The use of a name, a fictive kinship term, or a combination of the two, as seen here, is very common for first- and second-person reference in Indonesian (Djenar et al., 2018). By addressing this utterance to Aina, Lela shifts the participation framework and Aina becomes the recipient. Finally, in line 95, Aina herself speaks, using her name for first-person reference and thus further shifts the participation framework as she takes on the role of speaker.

(15) Multiple shifts in participation framework.

80

Hana:

Ga harus TOEFL UPI kan? ‘(It) doesn’t need to be the UPI TOEFL right?’

81

…(4.6)

82

Ratih:

Aku

mah

ikut

si=

Bunda

aja

deh.

1sg

part

follow

det

B.

just

part

‘I’ll just follow Bunda.’

83

Aku lihat dulu=. ‘I’ll wait and see.’

84

Hana:

Téh recommended, ‘As recommended by her/you.’

85

yang= … kuantitasnya agak-aga = k. ‘something of reasonable quantity.’

86

Rina:

Tuh

Téh

Aina

tuh

bisa

milih-milih

makanan

mah.

that

sister

A.

that

can

choose-redup

food

part

‘It seems like Teh Aina chooses food well.’

87

Biasanya bento-bentoan Téh Irsa mah. ‘Teh Irsa usually (has) bento.’

88

Lela:

Aina

[kemarin]

Téh

Aina

makan

apa?

A.

yesterday

sister

A.

eat

what

Aina, what did you (Aina) eat yesterday?

89

Diyah:

[Bento-bentoan]. ‘Bento’

93

Aina:

…Pengen sayu = r, ‘(I) want vegetables’

94

Enya. ‘Yes’

95

Pengen …

yang

ada…

berkuah-berkuah

Aina

mah.

want

rel

have

intr-broth-redup

A.

part

‘I (Aina) want something with broth.’

Example (16) is another case of a change in participation framework. Here, four friends (two couples) are chatting. Prior to this, Wida and Amru, who are a couple, have been talking to each other about a survey Amru is going to conduct as part of a university class. The extract picks up after Asma and Rinal ask about the location of the survey. In line 1695, there is a change in footing. Amru changes the topic from the survey he will conduct to a survey that Wida had previously participated in. He simultaneously changes the participation framework by referring to Wida in the third person with the pronoun dia ‘3sg’. This pronoun is the explicit A of an elaborated two-argument predicate ikut ‘join, participate in’, which also has an explicit P, survei ‘survey, fieldtrip’. At this point, rather than being an addressee as she had been up to now, Wida momentarily becomes an overhearer, as Amru excludes her and directs his comment to Asma and Rinal. Then, in line 1696, Amru immediately shifts footing again, addressing his next utterance to Wida, using the vocative sayang ‘dear’, and thus shifting Asma and Rinal’s role to that of overhearer. Wida responds and laughs and Asma then re-enters the interaction, asking for elaboration on what they had been saying. This kind of micro-shift in footing is not at all unusual in multiparty conversation, and, in particular, collaborative tellings where some participants have a more intimate relationship than others. The key point is that it is precisely at such moments of change in footing that we are more likely to observe the use of elaborated transitive predicates.

(16) Change in participation framework.

1688

Asma:

Kampung tapi? ‘But (it’s) rural?’

1689

Amru:

He-eh

[kampung].

‘Uh-huh rural.’

1690

Wida:

[Lewat] … Ci=gon=

[=].

‘Past Cigon=,’

1691

Rinal:

[Cigondewah].

‘Cigondewah.’

1692

Amru:

Cigondewah. ‘Cigondewah.’

1693

Wida:

Cigondewah=. ‘Cigondewah.’

1694

…ya? ‘Right?’

1695

Dia

pernah

ikut

survei

sekali.

3sg

ever

join

survey

one.time

‘She once joined a survey.’

1696

…Dan itu enak yah sayang? ‘And it was nice, right dear?’

1697

Wida:

…Enak tapi aku gak bisa ngomo=ng di

[sana]=.

‘Nice but I couldn’t talk there.’

1698

Amru:

[Hm-hm].

‘Uh-huh.’

1699

Wida:

@@@@ @@ (LAUGHING)

1700

Asma:

Enaknya apaan? ‘What was nice (about it)?’

In Example (17), this same group of friends are discussing how they can transport some goods they want to send to another city to sell. They are talking about how much it would cost to send the goods by train. This discussion is presented as general information about how the process works and as is typical of much of Indonesian conversation, much of the language they are using is fairly low in Transitivity and makes extensive use of allusive reference. We can see this in line 699, which is in a topic comment construction, where the topic is kereta itu ‘the train’ and the comment is the predicate kena charge ‘hit with a charge’ with an implied experiencer of the charge. Similarly, in 708–710, Weni says ‘(it’s) not possible if (one) just entrusts (it) [without paying]’ and Asma confirms this by saying in line 711, ‘(they—the train company) would suffer a loss’. Amru then shifts the direction of talk, that is, he shifts the footing, by raising a slightly different scenario, and he does so with a change in the referentiality of arguments in his utterances. He is not speaking generically like the others, but rather hypothetically about a possible line of action that is presented as something that he himself could undertake. (See Ewing, 2024, for a more detailed discussion of the relationship between referentiality and footing). He marks this shift in perspective, that is, a shift in footing, in lines 715–718, with ‘for example I’m a passenger, a passenger taking baggage’, subsequently asking if there is a limit on how much baggage he can take. His interlocutors agree there is no limit (according to their non-present friend Amel) and they agree with typically allusive generic statements. But Amru persists with his hypothetical, first using orang ‘person, one, someone’ as subject (so more generic) but then quicky changing to ‘I take two carriages (worth of goods)—(is that) allowed?’ in line 729. This is obviously humorous, and they know it could not really be possible, but the friends go along with it and laugh. And Amru continues to drive his point home by repeating essentially the same scenario several times, all with elaborated transitive cluses. The difference in footing between the mundanely generic to the humorously hypothetical is highlighted by the repeated use of these elaborated transitive predicates.

(17) Change in referentiality.
698	Amru:	Adapun kalo mau kereta=, ‘And then if (you) want a train,’
699		…kereta itu k- kena … charge ga sih?
		‘the train, (you’re) hit with a charge right?’
700		buat berapa kilogram …				[pertama].
		‘for the first however many kilograms.’
701	Weni:					[Ke=na].
						‘(You’re) hit.’
702	Asma:	Kena. ‘(You’re) hit.’
703		kayaknya. ‘it would seem,’
704	Weni:	Pasti kena. ‘Definitely (you’re) hit.’
707	Asma:	Hm-hm. ‘Uh-huh.’
708	Weni:	…Gak mungkin kalo misalnya, ‘(It’s) impossible if for example,’
709		…Titip doang, ‘(you) just drop off (your things),’
710		titip				[doang.
		‘just drop off (your things).’
711	Asma:					[Rugi dong].
						‘(They) would lose money of course.’
712	Weni:	ala=h]. ‘Come on.’
713		Tendang aja				[mereka=].
		‘They’d kick (the things) off.’
714	Amru:					[Enggak.
						‘No.’
715		Misalnya] aku, ‘For example I,’
716	Asma:	@@	[@@@]
717	Amru:		[penumpang].
			‘am a passenger.’
718		penumpang bawa … barang, ‘a passenger bringing things,’
719		…(H) ada … limitnya ga? ‘is there a limit?’
720		[ada XXX]. ‘is there (unclear).’
721	Weni:	[Engga katanya]. ‘Seems not.’
722		…Kata Amel engga. ‘Amel says no.’
723		Dia tuh engga – ‘He doesn’t –‘
724		…Engga pake maksimalnya				[berapa].
		‘There’s no certain maximum.’
725	Amru:					[Nanti	orang],
						later	people
						‘So someone,’
726		boleh	bawa bar-		barang	berapa	[aja].
		can	bring		things	how.much	just
		‘can bring however many things.’
727	Weni:						[Boleh].
							‘(You) can.’
728		boleh. ‘(You) can.’
729	Amru:	Aku	bawa		dua	gerbong	boleh?
		1sg	bring		two	carriage	can
		‘Could I bring two train carriages (worth)?’
730	Weni:	…	[Boleh].
			‘(You) could.’
731	Amru:		[<@ bawa satu orang tiket @>],
			‘with a ticket for one person,’
732	Asma:			[@@]
733	Amru:	satu tiket @? ‘one ticket?’

And we see that as the conversation progress, Amru repeats essentially the same scenario, again using elaborated transitive predicates.

749	Amru:	Aku	bawa	dua	gerbong
		1sg	bring	two	carriage
		‘I bring two carriages (worth),’
750	Wida:	Dua gerbong mau bawa apa aja, ‘Two carriages bring anything at all,’
751		aku	[tanya].
		‘I’ll ask.’
729	Amru:		[@<	Daripada]	gue	beli	banyak	volume @>,
				rather.than	1sg	buy	much	volume
				‘Rather than I buy a lot of volume (for baggage),’
753		beli tiket satu, ‘(I) buy one ticket,’
754		duduk. ‘(and) sit.’

Finally, what does the absence of a change in footing look like? Example (18) is an extended segment of an interaction that begins with a sustained episode about how to cut one’s own hair. In line 1993, Wida introduces a new topic using an elaborated transitive predicate. This is followed by a new sustained episode about a trans woman and how she straightens her hair. There are two factors that contribute to this arrangement. First, as previously observed, much of conversation is low in Transitivity and many predicates have only one argument. But two-argument predicates certainly occur, often with relatively high Transitivity. As Hopper and Thompson (1980) observed, high Transitive clauses often occur in the foregrounded portions of text, often where some sort of narrative or set of actions is being depicted. In such contexts, the proclivity of Indonesian speakers not to explicitly express arguments regularly yields transitive predicates that may have only one, or often no, explicit arguments. This is illustrated in Example (18) where an extended discussion of how to cut one’s own hair includes several transitive predicates, but none with two explicit arguments. In line 1993, there is a change in footing when the topic shifts from the discussion of Rinal’s question about how he can cut his own hair to an anecdote about a trans woman who works in a hair salon and the way that she deals with her own hair. At the point of the shift to this new topic, Wida produces an elaborated transitive predicate with two explicit arguments. Then, as she continues to talk about the trans woman and what she does to her hair, any transitive predicates that occur include allusive reference and are not elaborated with two explicit arguments.

(18) Change in topic in the context of ongoing talk.
1966	Wida:	<@ Lu ngapain sih Nal @> ? ‘What are you doing Nal?’
1967	Rinal:	Kalau mau potong rambut	[gimana=].
		‘How do (you) cut hair.’
1968	Wida:		[<@ Dibelah]-pinggirin @>.
			‘(You) part (it) on the side.’
1969	Amru:	@@
1970	ALL:	(LAUGING)
1971	Amru:	Gimana gitu yah. ‘How is that.’
1972	MANY:	[(LAUGHING)]
1973	Wida:	[Ada sisir Nal. ‘There’s a comb Nal.’
1974		Kasih sisir]. ‘Use a comb.’
1975	Asma:	@
1976	Rinal:	Mau motong gimana=? ‘How do (you) cut (it)?’
1977	Wida:	[@@@]
1978	Amru:	[Ini sisir] bukan? ‘This is a comb right?’
1979		U=h disetrika. ‘Uh (you) iron (it).’
1980	Wida:	[<@ Bego @> @@]. ‘Stupid.’
1981	Asma:	[@@@]
1982	Wida:	@@
1983	Rinal:	Gak usah ah. ‘Don’t need to.’
1984		Biarin. ‘Leave (it).’
1985	Asma:	Pake setrika aja	[sisirnya].
		‘Just use an iron to straighten it.’
1986	Wida:		[@@]@@
1987	Rinal:	Biar lurus. ‘So (it’s) straight.’
1988	Asma:	<@ Biar lurus @>. ‘So (it’s) straight.’
1989		[@@@]
1990	Wida:	[@@@]
1991	Asma:	Dicatok jadi kering rambutnya. ‘(you) use curlers (on it) so the hair gets dry.’
1992	Wida:	@ …Siapa, ‘Who,’
1993		Aku	pernah	liat	banci	juga	yah?
		1sg	ever	see	trans.woman	also	yeah
		‘I once saw a trans woman right?’
1994	Asma:	…Apa. ‘What.’
1995	Wida:	Kan? ‘Right?’
1996		…Biasanya kan? ‘Usually y’know?’
1997		…pake catokan gini yah. ‘(she) uses curlers like this right.’
1998		Dan banci itu, ‘And that trans woman,’
1999		…rambutnya emang udah panjang. ‘her hair was really long. ‘
2000		seginilah. ‘this long.’
2001		…Segini. ‘this long.’
2002		[Segini]. ‘this long.’
2003	Asma:	[He-eh]. ‘Uh-huh.’
2004	Wida:	@@ <@ Dia gini, ‘She did this,’
2004	Wida:	disetrika @>. ‘(she) ironed (it).’

6. Discussion and Further Prospects

Based on their low frequency, we categorized predicates with two explicit arguments, A and P, as atypical among predicates used in Indonesian conversation, despite the fact that transitive clauses with two overt arguments are often presented as “basic” (Sneddon et al., 2010) to Indonesian grammar (as they are also often presented for many languages of the world). We then explored the question of whether these represent an atypical configuration and whether there is something to be said about the contexts in which they do in fact occur (albeit infrequently) in conversational interactions?

The extracts discussed above illustrate the trend observed in the data that such atypical configurations of predicates occur as part of a change in footing. This change in footing may involve shifts in topic, Example (14); participation framework, Examples (16) and (17); or referential orientation, Example (18). Example (19) also contrasted the use of an elaborated transitive predicate at the point of a change in footing due to topic shift, with the use of predicates with only one or no explicit argument during sustained episodes. Use of more elaborated constructions and “heavier” (more explicit) referring expressions at the points of change in footing in Indonesian conversation is reminiscent of Fox’s (1987) findings regarding referring expressions and discourse structure in English texts.

Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) original work on scalar Transitivity includes a discussion of its use in discourse, in which they suggested that clauses higher in Transitivity tend to form the foreground in discourse, for example, the events in a narrative. In contrast, clauses lower in Transitivity tend to form the background, for example, peripheral discourse that supports, but is not part of, the events of a narrative. In this framework, segments of discourse that indicate changes in footing can be seen as background material, for example, as introductory material that stands at the periphery of narrative events, or other sustained episodes. If the elaborated predicate configurations discussed here are thought of as a kind of prototypical transitive clause due to their inclusion of two overt arguments, the situation in conversational Indonesian would seem to run counter to Hopper and Thompson’s claim. A closer examination suggests this would be too simplistic an analysis. Returning to Example (19), we see that what characterizes the two sustained episodes, the first about Rinal cutting his own hair and the second about how the trans woman straightens her hair, is the frequency of allusive reference (or in other words, the paucity of explicit arguments). This includes intransitive predicates as well as transitive predicates. And indeed, some of these are high in scalar Transitivity as Hopper and Thompson (1980) suggested we could expect, for example, disetrika ‘iron’, which is said twice, once to Rinal in line 1979 ‘(you) iron (your hair)’ and once about the trans woman in line 2004, ‘(she) ironed (her hair)’. What adds to the higher Transitive, in addition to there being two (albeit allusive) arguments, is the individuation of the referents of these arguments and the fact that they are identifiable and are being tracked through discourse. This identifiability is indeed a major part of the motivation for the use of allusive reference. But it is also important to note that the sustained episodes are by no means consistently high in Transitivity and contain many predicate constructions that are lower in Transitivity as well. As noted above, the transition to the story about the trans woman stands out by being produced with a transitive predicate elaborated by two explicit arguments, an A and a P, in line 1993 aku pernah liat banci juga yah? ‘I once saw a trans woman right?’. The explicit mention of the P argument banci ‘trans woman’ is motivated by this being the introduction of a new character who is unidentifiable at first mention. The explicit mention of the A argument aku ‘I’ has to do with more than identifiability; a participant within the conversation is inherently identifiable. In this case, it has to do with the change in the participation framework. Wida is moving from her earlier role as ratified addressee who was primarily offering feedback in the form of laughing and evaluation (bego ‘stupid’). She is now asserting her role as speaker and storyteller. Without the explicit first-person mention, the referential identity of the A argument would be ambiguous; is she asking whether the others had ever seen a trans woman? And crucially, the social action being performed would be unclear; why is she asking this seemingly out of the blue? But by producing this transitive predicate with both arguments being explicit, it is clearly functioning as the introduction to a narrative and as a shift in footing in the interaction.

The data examined here and the subsequent discussion have delved into the category of atypical predicates elaborated with two explicit arguments as a general class. Further work can be performed looking at this issue in a more refined way, for example, by looking at the role in conversation of different argument types and how they are expressed, and differentiating predicate constructions (that is, AV and PV configurations). Finally, the claim here is not that elaborated transitive predicates are necessary to indicate a change in footing, nor that they only occur when there are changes in footing. It is a more general observation that there is a strong tendency for these atypical constructions to occur when there is a shift in footing. A deeper dive into the data might help develop a more nuanced understanding about motivations for the use of atypical configurations. This can be achieved by examining cases when change in footing does not include elaborated transitive predicates or the rare cases when an elaborated transitive predicate does not occur at a change in footing (a situation not seen in the data examined here). But as mentioned above, it may be in the nature of atypical configurations, due to their infrequent occurrence, that it is difficult to develop a definitive understanding of their use.