Compounds 127
(107) Paremba' Joko Tole se careta e-dungeng-ngagi-n-a sengko'.
Paremba' Joko Tole REL story OV-story-AGI-n-IRR I
‘Paremba’ Joko Tole is the story that I am going to tell.’
In both instances here, the n extension is optional. (106) would be perfectly
grammatical with edhingagi in place of edhingagin and (107) would be with
edungengngagia rather than edungengngagina. There is a higher incidence in
the use of the extension in environments such as in (107), where it serves to
break up a V+V sequence, than in word-final position, where no affix, hence no
vowel, follows.
As argued by Stevens (1968:94), the extension is phonologically a part of
the root, despite the fact that it is often syllabified as part of an adjoining sylla-
ble. Evidence for this is the fact that it acts as part of the root in final syllable
reduplication. For example, in the reduplicated form as pan-arampan ‘several’
(104b) the n extension occurs in the reduplicated syllable prefixed to the root. In
addition, the reduplicated form of (104a) kamman includes the extension, as in
(108).
(108) man-kamman ‘everywhere’
Additionally, reduplicated forms for the two examples in (105) are ekan-
dukane, which means ‘to become extremely angry’, and eten-patena a plural
form of ‘will be killed’. In both cases, the n occurs in the reduplicated syllable.
Reduplication is described in detail in Chapter 5.
4. Compounds
Although the majority of compounds used in the language are compound nouns,
there are compound verbs as well. Compound nouns are generally either N-N
compounds or N-V compounds. Some compounds take the full form of the ini-
tial N and others use an abbreviated form. Examples of N-N compounds are
given in (109) and N-V compounds in (110).
(109) N-N compounds
sapedha motor ‘motorcycle’ < sapedha ‘bicycle’ + motor ‘car’
gula bato ‘lump sugar’ < gula ‘sugar’ + bato ‘rock’
gula paser ‘granulated sugar’ < gula ‘sugar’ + paser ‘sand’
toko buku ‘bookstore’ < toko ‘store’ + buku ‘book’
perang tolesan ‘war of words’ < perang ‘war’ + tolesan ‘writing’