ACCENTUAL VARIATIONS OF SASAK LANGUAGE: A STUDY ON NGENO-NGENE DIALECT OF EAST LOMBOK DISTRICT

This study is aimed at finding out the accentual variation of Sasak Ngeno-Ngene dialect in East Lombok district. It tries to describe the accentual variations and their phonological patterns, and the factors which govern the varied patterns. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The source of data was all linguistics expression spoken in four research villages including Pancor village, Kotaraja village, Rarang village, and South Masbagik village. A sample data was recorded from informants who had fulfilled some criteria. The data were collected by observing, storytelling, recording, and note taking. The result of this study shows that every village has their own unique accentual realization. Pancor variant mostly uses the back mid-high /o/sound in realizing the , Kotaraja variant mostly uses the schwa /ә/ in its vocabularies, South Masbagik mostly uses the mid front /ε/ sound in its vocabularies, and Rarang variant sometimes uses the same with others but it differs significantly from another accents through its consonant choices. One accent differs from another accent due to the lexical information, meaning that the accents often vary in the phonemic form they select for lexical representation. This research also found the factors that triggered the accentual variation on ngeno-ngene dialect with regards to the dialectal evolution and social factor.