CIGULU-CIGULU (TEKA-TEKI) MASYARAKAT TUTUR BAHASA MELAYU AMBON (KAJIAN ETNOSEMANTIK: SUATU PENDEKATAN AWAL)

Abstract

Cigulu-cigulu is a term generally used to refer to a form of oral tradition, namely traditional quwstions or puzzles in the eastern region of Indonesia. In Maluku, cigulu-cigulu is often played in relaxed situations when people gather, for example in masohi (mutual corporation )for build a  house or clears the farm, at weddings, or mourning the dead. When someone give questions about cigulu-cigulu, people who listened will be stimulated to think and guess about the answers.This is interesting because the vocabularies is not far from their environment, or reflects the habits and lifestyle of the Maluku people. Cigulu-cigulu always opens with the sentences “Cigulu-cigulu satu!” (one of cigulu-cigulu) and closes with the question “apakah itu?” (what’s it?). Even so, the creativity cigulu-cigulu players in each content through words, phrases, clauses, and even sentences is made so nicely and interesting that is makes the listeners generally feel surprised, weird, or funny when they know the answers. Thus, this research will describe the forms, functions, and aspects of language and culture contained in cigulu-cigulu found in Maluku. The research location is Subdistrict of Taniwel, West Seram Regency, Maluku Province, for the reason that population homogeneity is still high, namely that the majority are indigeneous people. An etnosemantics approach is used in this research, which aims to explore the culture values that reflected in each cigulu-cigulu which belongs to Ambones Malay speaking community. The method used is participatory observation. Observations were made to observe the extent to which cigulu-cigulu is played in every activity of the Ambones Malay speaking community which is carried out together, then how the vocabularies is used in each question of cigulu-cigulu which is usually played in these situations. Unstructure interviews were conducted with several cigulu-cigulu players (questioners and answerers) who met the criterias, to see their understanding of the form, functions, and aspect sof language and culture that reflected in each questions and answers. The results of the research show that the cigulu-cigulu which belongs to Ambones Malay speaking community can be classified into two types, namely contradictory and non contradictory forms. Its functions include testing someone’s intelligence, entertaining, and educating. The linguistic aspects include morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. The cultural values behind the use of cigulu-cigulu include community activities or habits, geographical aspects, professions or livelihoods, as well as community harvests.