Affixation 109
(42) a. Polisi nyaba' maleng e penjara.
police AV.put thief at jail
‘The police put the thief in jail.’
b. Polisi a-penjara'-agi maleng.
police AV-jail-AGI thief
‘The police jailed the thief.’
As is clear from the pair of sentences in (42) and their English translations, this
has its analogue in English, where there is no derivational morphology but sim-
ple conversion of the noun jail to a verbal use. Finally there is also an instru-
mental use of -agi in which the instrument of selected verbs is the direct object,
as in (43b).
(43) a. Siti mungkos sassa'an kalaban koran.
Siti AV.wrap laundry with newspaper
‘Siti wrapped the laundry with newspaper.’
b. Siti mungkos-sagi koran ka sassa'an.
Siti AV.wrap-AGI newpaper to laundry
‘Siti wrapped newspaper around the laundry.’
This construction is detailed in Chapter 10 section 2.4.
1.2 Nominal morphology
A number of morphemes, when affixed to various stems, derive nouns. As will
be clear in the course of the discussion, many of the morphemes used to derive
nouns have the same phonological shape as morphemes that derive verbs. It is
this kind of identity of noun and verb morphology that sometimes leads to
claims about precategoriality (Jelinek and Demers 1994, Foley 1998).
1.2.1 Definite -na, /na/
The most frequently occurring morpheme with nouns is the definite suffix -na.
Suffixation to a consonant-final stem (other than glottal stop) triggers the mor-
phophonological process described in Chapter 2 section 6, in which the [n] to-
tally assimilates to the final consonant of the stem, resulting in a geminate con-
sonant. It occurs in possessive constructions (such as the data in Chapter 3
section 2.4 on pronouns), in which it is suffixed to the possessed noun, which is
followed by the possessor.