During the last decades a number of studies have been published dealing specifically with the Malay ligature yang. The complex behavioutr of yang has stimulated scholars to analyse it from various points of view: syntax (Kaswanti Purwo 1983, Verhaar 1983), semantics (Steinhauer 1992), and discourse (Simin 1988). In these studies the focus of attention is almost exclusively on the standard varieties of the language. Studying pre-modern and non-standard./informal Malay texts, however, one finds yang in contexts that are banned by the rules of contemporary standard Malay. Thus these texts may provide answers on how yang evolved, as well as how restrictive rules came to apply during a process of standardisation.

References:

Kaswanti Purwo, Bambang. 1983. Kata yang sebagai pengetat. Majalah Pembinaan Bahasa Indonesia 4/3: 175-185

Simin, Azhar M. 1988. Discourse syntax of yang in Malay (bahasa Malaya). Kuala Lumpur, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (PhD dissertation Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1983)

Steinhauer, H. 1992. On the meaning of yang in Indonesian. In: Dutton, T., Malcolm Ross, and Darrell Tryon (eds), The language game: papers in memory of Donald Laycock. Pacific Linguistics C-110: 427-439.

Verhaar, John W.M. 1983. On the syntax of yang in Indonesian. In: Amran Halim, Lois Carrington, and S.A. Wurm (eds), Papers from the Third International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, vol.4 Thematic variation. Pacific Liguistics C-77: 43-70