Goddard, Cliff (2003). Dynamic ter– in Malay (Bahasa Melayu): A study in grammatical polysemy. Studies in Language, 27(2), 287-322. DOI: 10.1075/sl.27.2.04god
This paper undertakes a fine-grained semantic analysis of some of the multiple uses of the polyfunctional verbal prefix ter– in Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia. The analysis is conducted within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna
Wierzbicka, supported by examples drawn from a large corpus of naturally occuring Malay texts. The main goals are to accurately describe the full range of meanings, and to decide to what extent apparent differences are contextually-induced as opposed to being semantically encoded. In the end, seven
distinct but interrelated lexico-semantic schemas are identified, constituting a network of grammatical polysemy.
