Effective Sentences in Indonesian

Abstract This paper aims to describe effective sentences in Indonesian. It is shown that (in Indonesian) an effective sentence could be manifested by the addition or subtraction of a sentence element such as the copula adalah ’to be’, the prepositions dari ‘of’, the relative pronoun yang, and clause reduction. Effectiveness tied to a reduced clause only undergoes a subtraction of a sentence element such a nominal predicate and the subject of a dependent clause. Importantly, it is shown that effectiveness can be said to be universal (i.e. the analysis is supplemented by the English data) which automatically corroborate and support the effectiveness phenomena in Indonesian. Keywords: copula, reduced clauses, language economy