DOI: https://doi.org/10.14710/parole.v15i2.80-88

Cross-Paradigmatic Metaphorical Structure: A case of Indonesian MAJU vs MUNDUR in voice alternation

Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia

Received: 19 Dec 2025; Revised: 26 Feb 2026; Accepted: 27 Feb 2026; Available online: 3 Mar 2026; Published: 10 Oct 2025.
Open Access Copyright (c) 2026 PAROLE: Journal of Linguistics and Education under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.

Citation Format:
Abstract

This paper argues that the empirical failures of the Invariance Hypothesis (IH) and the Meaning-Preserving Hypothesis (MPH) are not independent issues. Rather, they are parallel manifestations of a core Construction Grammar (CxG) principle: meaning is surface-based and construction-specific. We demonstrate this via a cross-paradigmatic corpus study, analyzing the distribution of metaphorical senses of the Indonesian antonyms MAJU ‘move forward’ and MUNDUR ‘move backward’ across active (meN-) and passive (di-) voice constructions. The results reveal statistical asymmetries and categorical gaps in how these verbs’ metaphorical senses are used. This challenges both semantic stability hypotheses by showing that metaphorical meaning is not just mapped from an abstract concept but is instead bound to specific, surface-level grammatical constructions. This study provides novel empirical evidence for a non-derivational, symmetrical analysis of Indonesian voice, rooted in the constructional nature of metaphor.

Fulltext View|Download
Keywords: Semantics; Voice; Conceptual Metaphor; Construction Grammar; Cognitive Linguistics; Corpus Linguistics

Article Metrics:

Article Info
Section: Research Article
Language : EN
Recent articles
Hybridity in Academic Writing: Strategies to Compensate for Lexical Deficits in SMP Terbuka Performance, Indexcality, and Community Participant in Dalupa Poetry in West Aceh: An Anthropolinguistic Study Evaluating Impoliteness in Refusals: A Cross-cultural Study on Pragmatic Perception between Javanese Learners of English and Native Speakers of English More recent articles
Most cited articles
The Effectiveness of TPR (Total Physical Response) Method in English Vocabulary Mastery of Elementary School Children Frontmatter COGNITIVISM AND ITS IMPLICATION IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING The Implication of Curriculum Renewal on ELT in Indonesia COMPLAINING IN EFL LEARNERS: DIFFERENCES OF REALIZATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN (A CASE STUDY OF INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS AT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF THE INDONESIAN UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION) More cited articles
  1. Arka, I W. (2003). Voice systems in the Austronesian Languages of Nusantara: Typology, Symmetricality, and Undergoer Orientation. Linguistik Indonesia, 21, 113–139
  2. Boas, H. C. (2003). A Constructional Approach to Resultative. Stanford: CSLI Publications
  3. Boas, H. C. (2008). Determining the structure of lexical entries and grammatical constructions in Construction Grammar. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 6, 113–144. doi: 10.1075/arcl.6.06boa
  4. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press
  5. Croft, W. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. Croft, W. (2009). Connecting frames and constructions: A case study of eat and feed, Constructions and Frames, 1(1), 7–28
  7. Deignan, A. (1999). Metaphorical polysemy and paradigmatic relations: A corpus study. Word, 50(3), 319–38
  8. Fillmore, C. J., Paul K., & O’Connor M. C. (1988). Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of ‘let alone’. Language, 64(3), 501–538. doi: 10.2307/414531
  9. Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  10. Goldberg, A. E. (2002). Surface generalizations: An alternative to alternations. Cognitive Linguistics, 13(4), 327–356. doi: 10.1515/cogl.2002.022
  11. Goldberg, A. E. (2006). Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. Goldhahn, D., Eckart, T., & Quasthoff, U. 2012. “Building Large Monolingual Dictionaries at the Leipzig Corpora Collection: From 100 to 200 Languages” dalam Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), 2012
  13. Gries, S. Th. (2017). Quantitative corpus linguistics with R: A practical introduction (2nd Edition). New York: Routledge
  14. Kroeger, P. (2005). Analyzing grammar: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  15. Kroeger, P. (2007). Morphosyntactic vs. morphosemantic functions of Indonesian -kan. In A. Zaenen (ed.), Architectures, Rules, and Preferences: Variations on Themes by Joan W. Bresnan. Stanford: CSLI. Pp. 229–51
  16. Lakoff, G. (1970). Irregularity in Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
  17. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  18. Lakoff, G. (1990). The invariance hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas? Cognitive Linguistics, 1(1), 39–74
  19. Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 202–51
  20. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  21. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Volume I. Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press
  22. McCawley, J. D. (1968). Lexical Insertion in a transformational grammar without deep structure. In Papers from the fourth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago. Pp. 71–80
  23. McDonnell, B. (2016). Symmetrical voice constructions in Besemah: A usage-based approach [PhD thesis]. Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara
  24. Perek, F. (2014). Rethinking Constructional Polysemy: The Case of the English Conative Construction. In D. Glynn & J. A. Robinson (Eds.), Corpus Methods for Semantics: Quantitative Studies in Polysemy and Synonymy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Pp. 57–78
  25. Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure. Cambridge: MIT Press
  26. R Core Team. (2025). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL: https://www.R-project.org/
  27. Rajeg, G. P. W. (2021). corplingr. Open Science Framework. doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/X8CW4
  28. Rajeg, G. P. W., & Arka, I W. (2023). Usage-based perspective on argument realisation: A corpus study of Indonesian BUY verbs in applicative construction with -kan. NUSA: Linguistic Studies of Languages in and around Indonesia, 74, 83–114. doi: 10.15026/0002000019
  29. Rajeg, G. P. W., Rajeg, I M., & Arka, I W. (2020). Corpus-based approach meets LFG: Puzzling voice alternation in Indonesian. figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12423788.v2
  30. Rajeg, I M., Rajeg, G. P. W., & Arka, I W. (2022). Corpus linguistic and experimental studies on the meaning-preserving hypothesis in Indonesian voice alternations. Linguistics Vanguard, 8(1), 367–382. doi: 10.1515/lingvan-2020-0104
  31. Rajeg, G. P. W., & Artawa, K. (2024). Kajian korpus kuantitatif terhadap aspek-aspek diatesis dalam bahasa Indonesia. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10615406
  32. Riesberg, S. (2014). Symmetrical Voice and Linking in Western Austronesian Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton
  33. Stefanowitsch, A. (2020). Corpus Linguistics: A guide to the methodology. Berlin: Language Science Press
  34. Turner, M. (1990). Aspects of the invariance hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 1(2), 247–55

Last update:

No citation recorded.

Last update: 2026-03-03 11:46:21

No citation recorded.