"Tepuk amai-amai" vs. "ride a cock-horse to shrewsbury cross": an analysis of linguistic features

This research aimed to identify the linguistic features of famous and less-famous children songs of Malay and English language. In addition, this research also focused on revealing whether Malay and English language shared the same linguistic features in the lyrics of the songs. A survey was adminis...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zainal, Nur Farhanah, Rashid Ali, Farrah Diebaa
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: IIUM Press, International Islamic University Malaysia 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://irep.iium.edu.my/67854/
http://irep.iium.edu.my/67854/
http://irep.iium.edu.my/67854/1/67854_Tepuk%20amai-amai%20%282017%29%20IIUM%20Press.pdf
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Summary:This research aimed to identify the linguistic features of famous and less-famous children songs of Malay and English language. In addition, this research also focused on revealing whether Malay and English language shared the same linguistic features in the lyrics of the songs. A survey was administered to 50 respondents in order to find out the famous and lessfamous songs of both Malay and English language. From the survey, a total of 10 songs from both languages have been identified as the famous and less-famous children songs. Each of the songs was then analyzed by looking at the sentence, vocabulary, repetition and onomatopoeia as well as the usage of articles and pronouns in the lyrics of the children songs. From the analysis, this study found that the famous children songs of Malay and English language are made up of simple sentence structure which follows the Subject-Verb- Object (SVO) word order and comprised of words that are simple and of high frequency. The numbers of repetitions and onomatopoeia are also high in the famous children songs while the usage of pronouns is low. On the contrary, the less-famous children songs are built of higher number of sentences which are complex and do not adhere to the SVO word order, higher number of complex and low frequency words, lower number of repetition and onomatopoeia as well as higher usage of pronouns compared to the famous children songs. In comparing the linguistic features of Malay and English children songs, it is found that both languages possessed similar linguistic features in terms of the sentence structure, vocabulary, repetition, onomatopoeia and pronouns in the lyrics of famous and less-famous children songs. These findings justified why children preferred some songs compared to the others. This is because they are more interested in songs which are simple and clear that suit their current stage in language development.