108 Chapter 4 Morphology
There are a very few intransitive verbs for which suffixation of -agi results in a
beneficiary.
(38) asassa ‘do laundry’ asassa'agi ‘cook rice for’
asapo ‘sweep’ asapowagi ‘sweep for’
ngopi ‘to make coffee’ ngopiyagi ‘make coffee for’
When suffixed to a verb of communication, such as bala ‘say’, bisi’
‘whisper’ and so on, -agi derives verbs in which the subject matter being com-
municated is the object.
(39) bala ‘say’ abala'agi ‘say about’
careta ‘say’ acraeta'agi ‘tell about’
bisi’ ‘whisper’ abisi'agi ‘whisper about’
As is true of -e, for some intransitive verb stems and adjectival roots, suffixation
of -agi derives a causative verb.
(40) kennal ‘know’ ngennallagi ‘introduce’
senneng ‘happy’ nyennengngagi ‘please someone’
tedhung ‘sleep’ nedhungngagi ‘put to bed’
mole ‘go home’ moleyagi ‘send home’
There is variation regarding the acceptability of some of these words. Some
speakers reject these, strongly preferring or only accepting causatives with the
causative prefix pa-. See Chapter 10 section 3 for a detailed discussion of Ma-
durese causatives.
There is a small number of nouns which, when used to describe a loca-
tion, can combine with -agi to form transitive verbs that denote the action of
putting an object or objects in that location. This is illustrated in the sentences in
(41b) and (42b)
(41) a. Ali noles panghaselan e buku.
Ali AV.write income at book
‘Ali entered the income in the book.’
b. Ali a-buku-wagi panghaselan.
A AV-book-AGI income
‘Ali entered the income in the book.’