102 Chapter 4 Morphology
(17) root actor voice
bukka' ‘open’ abukka' ‘be opened’
totop ‘close’ atotop ‘be closed’
esse ‘fill’ aesse ‘be filled’
engggun ‘situated’ aengggun ‘be situated’
Other noun roots result in verbs with the meaning ‘treat as an N’, ‘have an N’,
and others.
(18) root actor voice
bapa' ‘father’ abapa' ‘call a person “father”‘
ale' ‘younger sibling’ a'ale' ‘call a person ale’’
nyama ‘name’ anyama ‘be named’
bine ‘wife’ abine ‘marry’ (of men)
lake ‘husband’ alake ‘marry’ (of women)
daftar ‘list’ adaftar ‘register’
While there is no ironclad rule for the distribution of the two actor voice
prefixes, there are robust generalizations. Most base and many derived intransi-
tive predicates take a-; and as noted by Stevens (1968), the majority of stems
with an initial voiced or voiceless aspirated stop also take the a- prefix, al-
though there are many exceptions. As discussed in Chapter 9 section 1.1, some
verbs can occur with either a- or ng-, especially in the variety of Madurese spo-
ken in and around Bangkalan.
1.1.3 Object voice e-, /ɛ/
The prefix e- can be affixed to any transitive verbal stem (root or derived) to
signal that an object (theme, goal, etc.) has been selected as subject. These are
often referred to as passives in the literature (Stevens 1968, Zainudin et al,
1978, Moehlinabib et al 1979, Soegianto et al 1986), and are translated as such
for perspicuity in (14).^4
(19) root object voice
berri' give’ eberri' ‘be given’
kerem ‘send’ ekerem ‘be sent’
toles ‘write’ etoles ‘be written’
okom ‘punish’ eokom ‘be punished’
(^4) Despite some superficial similarity in the translation of these and the forms in (17),
unlike the forms in (17), forms in the object voice freely take agents. Thus, the uses of
a- as in (17) and e- here are completely unrelated.