Chapter 4 Morphology
There are two basic morphological processes in Madurese: affixation and redup-
lication. The major affixes are enumerated and illustrated here. Reduplication is
covered in Chapter 5.
1. Affixation
Aside from reduplication, Madurese affixation includes prefixes, suffixes, cir-
cumfixes, and very limited infixation. Many of the morphemes are multifunc-
tional, that is, the same phonological sequence can affix to various parts of
speech, and sometimes the effects on the stem are quite distinct.
A particularly salient example of this is the suffix -an. Depending on the
stem to which it is affixed, -an can derive nouns or adverbs or inflect verbs or
adjectives. For example, when suffixed to a verbal stem, the output can be a
nominal, as in:
(1) kakan ‘eat’ kakanan ‘food’
toles ‘write’ tolesan ‘writing’
At other times, when suffixed to a verbal stem, the result can be a verb indicat-
ing frequent, habitual or repeated action.^1
(2) baca ‘read’ maca'an ‘read frequently/like to read’
mole ‘go home’ moleyan ‘go home often’
When suffixed to certain nouns and adjectives, the result is a derived adverb, as
in
(3) bulan ‘month’ bulanan ‘monthly’
laon ‘slow’ laonan ‘slowly’
duli ‘soon’ duliyan ‘quickly, in a hurry’
(^1) Verb roots which require voice morphology will be presented in the actor voice form
(see sections 1.1.1-2), as maca'an is in (2), to avoid ambiguity when possible. The
form baca'an can be interpreted as either the verbal ‘read frequently’ in its uninflected
form or the derived nominal ‘reading matter’, analogous to the derived nominals in (1).