Balinese verbs related to water : metalanguage approach

Abstract
This article aims at displaying the way how to map the meaning of Balinese verbs related to water. The data are oral and written forms collected by observation, interview, and taking-note. The oral language was collected from the key-informant in three villages within two regencies in Bali, namely Klungkung and Buleleng. The written data was observed from the 4 novels using the modern Balinese language. The collected data was furthermore analyzed by Metalanguage approach which manages to map all the meaning in the form of language description. Metalanguage approach based upon entity, process, instrument, and result is able to detect the subtle meaning difference among the verbs having a similar semantic field. From the scale of time-stability, the result shows that the mapping of action verbs: anyud, ngelangi, mandus, silem, mambuh imply the time reference change rapidly. The mapping of process verbs: aad, tiis, éncéh and beku carry the time reference is less stable. The mapping of state verbs: bedak, belus and tuduh is considered to imply the time reference is very stable.