On the typology and syntax of TAM in Indonesian

This paper discusses Indonesian tense-aspect-modality (TAM): its typology as well as its structural and semantic properties. It is demonstrated that Indonesian TAM is of the morphosemantic and contextual type. While having no grammatical TAM, Indonesian shows a finiteness constraint. Certain control verbs such as ingin 'wish' take truncated complements where finite auxiliaries akan/sudah/sedang 'will/already/in the process of' are not allowed. The paper discusses the morphosemantic TAM associated with =nya nominalisation. It is argued that this nominalisation is one of the constructional resources used to imply a past temporal axis. There is evidence that certain structures involved in =nya nominalisation are of the equational-identificational type, while others are of the adjunct type.