THE COMPREHENSION LEVEL OF LEXICAL VERBS AMONG SPEAKERS OF KEDAH MALAY DIALECT IN TUBA ISLAND AND SATUN

The Kedah Malay Dialect (DMK) has long been the communication medium among the people of Tuba Island, Kedah and in Satun, Thailand. There is historical evedience that Satun was once under the Kedah Sultan patronage. This explains why the communication dialect spoken in both areas is the KDM dialect. This article discusses the comprehension level of several lexical verbs observed based on socio-cognitive aspect which focuses on location, age, gender and education. Among the objectives of this article are, first, analysis on the comprehension level of lexical items by employing the Vocabulary Recognition Task (VRT) analysis on DMK communicated at both locations. The second objective is to explain the comprehension level of DMK lexical at the research locations. 72 respondents were selected to respond to the questionnaire and recorded interviews regarding the lexical verbs in DMK. This article also was intended to observe the relation between social and cognitive background of the speakers or their socio-cognitive ability with the level of comprehension of DMK lexical. The result shows that the comprehension level of the respondents at Tuba Island are 40.3% or 29, and 45.8 % or 33 in Satun with a total percentage of 86.1%. In conclusion, the level of comprehension at both areas is ‘very good’. The impact of this research shows that the DMKs on Tuba Island and Satun are still comprehensible, although both areas are under two different political administration.