ABSTRACT
Indonesia is a multilingual country, and languages always have an impact on each other in the process of language contact. The present work intends to investigate the influence of Indonesian on Indonesian Chinese based on the functional variation of ‘ya’ in Indonesian Chinese. Different from Mandarin Putonghua, Indonesian Chinese ‘ya’ serves as a pragmatic marker that has the functions of positive response, as a tag question or a discourse marker. It plays a role in repairing discourse, summarizing discourse, and responding to discourse, and the most important function is to establish unity which can be explained from the language contact. Indonesian social and cultural values and the status of Chinese phonology and lexicology are another aspect of reasons.
