Affixation 99
1.1 Verbal morphology
One of the most salient properties of Madurese morphology is the voice system,
morphology that indicates the relationship of thematic roles and grammatical
functions. Madurese voice is discussed in detail in Chapter 9. The purpose here
is to simply present the morphological manifestations.
1.1.1 Actor voice ng-, //
The prefix ng-, and its morphophonological variants, signals actor voice or ac-
tive voice verbs, used when the actor is the subject of the sentence. It is affixed
directly to verb roots, as in
(7) root actor voice
enom ‘drink’ ngenom
kerem ‘send’ ngerem
baca ‘read’ maca
teggu ‘watch’ neggu
When affixed to roots denoting instruments, the resulting verb means ‘to use
instrument’.^3
(8) root actor voice
are’ ‘scythe’ ngare’ ‘cut with a scythe’
pacol ‘hoe’ macol ‘hoe’
tokol ‘hammer’ nokol ‘hammer’
kaca ‘glass, mirror’ ngaca ‘look in a mirror’
Very closely related to this is the use of the actor voice with different types of
food and drink to denote the process of making that food or drink.
(9) root actor voice
kopi ‘coffee’ ngopi ‘make coffee’ (can also be used to
denote ‘drink coffee’)
tajjin ‘porridge’ najjin ‘make porridge’
kolek ‘stewed bananas’ ngolek ‘stew bananas’
cao ‘climbing plant’ nyao ‘make a drink from cao plant’
(^3) Potentially these are precategorial roots. See Chapter 3 section 1.4 for discussion of
precategorial roots.