In Indonesian, telah, pernah, and sempat are used quite independently from the 'anchoring' in time of the predicate, usually ensured by 'adjuncts of time' in Sneddon's terminology.

Assuming that telah, pernah, sempat are aspect markers, we will examine their aspectual values. Unlike sudah, which expresses accomplishment with resulting state and can mark processes (changes of state, 'activities' in Vendler's terminology), telah, pernah, sempat cannot mark processes and always express 'achievements'. Pernah can mark a limited paradigm of adjectives (states). These three markers are supposed to refer to events distant in time ; we suppose that this observation is a consequence of the absolute lack of resulting state of the event they mark.

Some questions can be asked : why cannot the event marked by telah be simultaneous with an 'anchoring' expressed by an adjunct of time? "Tanggal 15 december, Iwan telah membeli mobil." means that Iwan had already bought his car (before) the 15th of December. This 'anteriority' implied by telah could be its main feature compared to those of pernah and sempat.

Furthermore, what aspect(s) do pernah and sempat express exactly? The label of semelfactive aspect is not always accurate, and does not explain why the speakers choose one or the other. Obviously, we have to deal with the attitude of the utterer towards his utterance ; in other words, the aspect markers pernah and sempat are loaded with modality meaning.

Through authentic examples, we will analyse the modalities expressed by telah, pernah, sempat ; our hypothesis is that telah is neutral (in terms of modality), while pernah emphasises the experience gained by the subject (either as agent or as patient) and sempat testifies to the low probability of realisation of the event, according to the utterer.

The combinations of markers set some interesting problems ; it is easy to explain why sudah pernah is frequent enough, while *telah pernah never occurs. Pernah sempat will also be examined. More puzzling is the very high frequency of the negative tidak akan pernah ; moreover the few occurrences of akan pernah (without any form of negation) appear only in a context of qualified certainty : hypothesis, concession, future of religious belief (i.e. religious predications). Our general hypothesis will be that on the one hand aspect markers are distinct from time adjuncts, (although aspect markers can lead in absentia to localization in time), and on the other hand that aspect markers often contain modality features. Modality could explain other trios of markers of an identical aspect, such as akan, mau, bakal.

For this paper, we will refer to a large corpus gathered on the internet, which will lead to an approximation of the frequency of these markers in a contemporary written urban Indonesian.

References

ABBOT, Ruth Louise (1995). - Discourse conditions governing aspect : the use of "sudah" and "telah" in Indonesian, Master of Arts, Michigan State University, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

CULIOLI, Antoine (1990). - Pour une linguistique de l'énonciation : opérations et représentations (Tome 1), Gap, Ophrys.

LOMBARD, Denys (1977). - Introduction à l'indonésien, Guéret, SECMI.

RAFFERTY, Ellen (1982). - "Aspect in conversational indonesian." Tense-Aspect : between semantics & pragmatics, UCLA, 1979, John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 65-87

SNEDDON, James Neil (1996). - Indonesian, a comprehensive grammar, London, Routledge