Two definite markers in Manado Malay

This chapter discusses referential strategies in Manado Malay (MM), a variety of trade Malay
spoken in North Sulawesi, with special focus on how a lexical NP is marked according to
the information status of the referent. Like some other Malay varieties, MM uses two strate-
gies to indicate definiteness: articles and the third person singular possessive. The articles
are derived from demonstratives and used for direct situational and anaphoric reference,
while the possessive is used for reference in which some kind of association is required for
identification. An article and a possessive may co-occur in one NP. The semantic domain
each form covers is not exclusive to the other but rather belongs to intrinsically different
semantic dimensions. Thus, the MM system enables speakers to mark that the referent is
textual-situationally accessible and, at the same time, associable to the larger shared situa-
tion.