Narrowing Semantic Drift Reversal

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c. Broadening

Broadening is the way that basically also puts the existing words in a language to the new uses. In this case, the uses of the words become broader than before Akmajian, et al., 2001. The word “cool” is an example of this concept. According to Akmajian, et al. 2001, “cool” was previously used to describe a specific artistic style of jazz. However, nowadays the word “cool” is not only used to describe something in the music field but also anything that is conceivable. One of the words in Bahasa Indonesia that undergoes that process of broadening is Ibu. Previously, the word Ibu was only used to refer to the biological mothers. However, nowadays, the word Ibu is used miscellaneously to all women who are older than the speaker or the women who are honored in the society.

d. Narrowing

According to Akmajian, et al. 2001, narrowing process treats the use of the words to be narrowed so that they nowadays only serve the functions in a certain context. One of the words undergoing this process is “meat.” In fact, the word was previously used to mean anything consumable. However, today the speakers of English only use the word to describe the edible solid flesh of animals Akmajian, et al., 2001. It is also found that one of the words in Bahasa Indonesia that is included as a narrowing word is sarjana, which previously meant “those who were intelligent.” However, nowadays the word sarjana is narrowed so that it only refers to “those who hold the bachelor degree.” 35

e. Semantic Drift

Semantic drift is defined as the process in which the meanings of words are shifted or changed Akmajian, et al., 2001. One of the words that undergo the process of semantic drifting is “washable,” which means “able to be washed.” However, in fact the word “washable” could not be applied to all the things that can be washed. It instead can only be applied to the things that are usually fabrics, such as washable cloth rather than washable car Akmajian, et al., 2001. The explanation above depicts that semantic drift allows the meanings of the words to go beyond the composite of the base words. In fact, it is rather difficult to find the phenomenon of semantic drift in Bahasa Indonesia due to the limitation of information source. However, the writer believes that the case of semantic drift may also happen in the daily usage of Bahasa Indonesia.

f. Reversal

Reversal allows certain words to have the shift of the sense turned into positive or negative. Akmajian, et al. 2001 provide the word “bad” to explain this concept. They says that “bad” previously meant “emphatically good.” However nowadays, people use the word “bad” to mean anything that is not desirable. One of the words in Bahasa Indonesia that undergo the process of reversals is pembantu. Basically, the archaic use of the word pembantu depicted a good meaning as anybody were really happy to announce himself as pembantu presiden or the assistant of the president. However, nowadays the meaning of the word pembantu is reversed to the negative meaning as it is associated with somebody that takes care the house. From 36 the explanation above, it can be concluded that basically reversal deals with the meaning of words that undergo the process of reversing the meaning into good- meaning words or bad-meaning words.

4. Cockney