Is There Pasif Semu in Jakarta Indonesian?

This paper examines whether pasif semu (P2), one of two passives in Standard Indonesian, exists in Jakarta Indonesian. In P2 in Standard Indonesian the verb appears in bare stem form, the theme has been promoted to surface subject, but—unlike European-style passives—the actor has not been demoted to adjunct. This is to be contrasted with the di-passive (P1), in which di- is prefixed to the verb, the theme is promoted to surface subject, and the agent is demoted to adjunct. Standard Indonesian is to a large extent an artificial language, the creation of language planners rather than of its speakers. In contrast, Jakarta Indonesian is the native language of the natives of Jakarta, and, through the influence of TV, movies, and radio, is heard with ever greater frequency throughout Indonesia. In our study (drawn from a variety of corpora), a clear contrast is seen between child and child directed speech, on the one hand, and adult to adult speech, on the other. P2 is essentially nonexistent in the former but exists robustly in the latter. We argue that child speech and child directed adult speech represent basilectal Jakarta Indonesian, in which P2 has been lost, and that the adult to adult corpora represent a mesolectal variety of Jakarta Indonesian that shows a number of influences from Standard Indonesian not found in the child and child directed corpora.