Contrastive Analysis of Verbs Expressing the Meaning of Play in Japanese Language and Indonesian Language

Abstract

Verbs have the main function as predicates in both Japanese and Indonesian languages. In Indonesian, there are several verbs that, when translated into
Japanese, become various kinds of verb, one of which is the verb that expresses the meaning of play. This study aimed to describe the verbs which express the meaning of play in Japanese and Indonesian in terms of syntax and semantics, as well as to find similarities and differences. The method used in this research was descriptive analysis. The Japanese language data used in this study came from the NINJAL corpus, while the Indonesian language data came from online news. Based on the analyzed data, the following results were found. Verbs that mean play in Japanese are “asobu”, “hiku”, “suru”, and "puree suru". Meanwhile, verb that means play in Indonesian is "main" which is modified with the affixes to "bermain" and "memainkan". The similarity of the verbs which mean play in Japanese and Indonesian is that in both languages, those verbs refer to doing something you like, whether it is a sport or a game, or to playing music or musical instruments. Meanwhile the difference lies in the equivalents of words. The verb which states the meaning play in Japanese is expressed by various kinds of verb according to the type and the object following it. Each verb has its own characteristics. When viewed from its type, there are verbs that are only either transitive or intransitive, and there are some that can be both transitive and intransitive. The transitive verbs cannot be followed by any object at random, but must be nouns in certain categories. Meanwhile in Indonesian, the verb "main" can be both transitive and intransitive. The transitive verbs can also be followed by objects in the form of any type of nouns as long as the objects or the things can be played.