The Basic Grammar of Kempo Subdialect

As the title tells, this book presents the basic grammar of Kempo subdialect spoken by its native speakers in its area in West Manggarai regency close to Komodo island. As presented in the introduction, Kempo subdialect belongs to West Manggarai dialect of Manggarai language spoken in the West Flores island in Indonesia. Kempo as a subdialect in this book refers to the division of Manggarai language into dialects, and the dialects into subdialects. The book contains the descriptions of two main sections, parts of speech and syntax. The parts of speech include descriptions of nominals, verbs, adjectives, interjections, prepositions, determiners, and conjunctions, meanwhile the syntax the descriptions of phrases and sentences. Like Manggarai language, Kempo subdialect performs two types of transitive constructions: Agent-Verb-Patient (A-V-P) and Patient-Verb-le-Agent (P-V-le-A). However the latter could raise a problem whether it indicates a passive or ergative construction. To conclude, this book presents such kind of phenomenal construction that supports to enrich both the theory of language typology and language universals.