English and Indonesian Verb Valence Classes: A Comparison

Valence refers to basic characteristics of a lexical unit to govern its arguments (Tesniere in Haspelmath, 2001). Unit lexical can be in the form of verbs, adverbs or adjectives. However, verbs show the most various valence patterns. Valence patterns has been a very interesting topic of research (Levin, 1993; Haspelmath, 2001; Allerton, 2006; Fillmore, 2008; Kipper, 2007 among others). Morphosyntax operation in verbs causes changing in valency, for example addition or deletion of valence. In addition, there is also change in increasing or decreasing level of valency. This is a very interesting phenomenon in a language. This valency changing occurs in Javanese which is the goal of this research. This research aims at explaining the changing valency in Javanese. The research is also expected to show increase and decrease of valency in Javanese. The finding shows that the valency patterns of verbs in Javanese are monovalent, bivalent, three places valency.