German Relative Clauses (Relativsatz) and Their Indonesian Equivalents in NADI Magazine: A Contrastive Syntactic Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v14i4.19548Keywords:
Relativsatz, German language, Indonesian language, Contrastive analysis, Syntax analysisAbstract
Relative clauses constitute an important grammatical device for establishing cohesion and reference in discourse. However, German and Indonesian differ significantly in the way relative meanings are encoded because German is an inflectional language with a rich system of relative pronouns and adverbs, whereas Indonesian relies primarily on the relative marker ‘yang’ and other lexical strategies. This study aims to describe the differences in the syntactic structures of German and Indonesian; the word order in German and Indonesian sentences; and the functions and meanings of Relativsatz in both languages. The research method employed is descriptive qualitative. This study adopts a document or text study approach, which emphasizes contrastive analysis and the interpretation of written materials based on their context. The data consist of German texts and their Indonesian translations published in NADI magazine (2020–2022). The data collection technique used in this study is the observation and note-taking method, which was carried out by carefully reading all data sources. The findings indicate that Relativsatz in German and Indonesian sentences share both similarities and differences in their functions and meanings. These differences are primarily due to the distinctive use of exophoric references in German Relativsatz, whereas Indonesian tends to employ endophoric references. Additionally, the findings reveal that German Relativsatz are predominantly realized through the relative pronouns der, die, and das, while Indonesian commonly uses yang, appositive constructions, coordination, and discourse-based strategies. Overall, the study shows that German grammatical relativization is frequently transformed into lexical or discourse-based constructions in Indonesian while preserving meaning, highlighting the importance of typological awareness in translation and foreign-language pedagogy.
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