12 February 2012

keluar

Here is a sign along the trail in Bukit Shahbandar which Adrian Clynes reckons is ungrammatical.The Malay reads munuju keluar ('towards exit'); but he notes that keluar is really ke + luar ('to outside'), so it is underlyingly a prepositional phrase, and the sign is literally 'towards to outside'.

But is keluar really a prepositional phrase? Maybe it has been used so often to mean 'exit' that it has undergone conversion (partly under the influence of English), and now it can also be regarded as a noun. If that is the case, then perhaps menuju keluar is fine.