Chapter 5 Reduplication
Reduplication, the copying of all or part of a word as an affix to a stem, is a
notable morphological process in Madurese, a characteristic it shares with other
Austronesian languages. Aside from the vowel harmony system described in
Chapter 2 section 4, reduplication is likely the aspect of Madurese grammar
most frequently discussed in the theoretical linguistics literature (Wilbur 1973;
Marantz 1982; Stevens 1985 &1994; Steriade 1988; Silverman 2002).
Madurese exhibits three basic types of reduplication: final-syllable redup-
lication, whole-word reduplication, and Ca/initial-syllable reduplication. In this
section, each type of reduplication and its interaction with other affixes is ex-
emplified and the meanings denoted by reduplication are detailed.
1. Reduplication types
Far and away the most prevalent reduplication process is final-syllable redupli-
cation. Final-syllable reduplication is also the process of most interest to theo-
retical linguists as the reduplicated syllable is affixed not to the end of the stem,
as in most cases of final-syllable reduplication, but at the beginning of the stem.
So, for a stem with an open CV final syllable, the reduplication process copies
that CV sequence and affixes it to the left edge of the stem, as in (1).^1
(1) buku ‘book’ ku-buku ‘books’
baca ‘read’ ca-baca ‘read (PL)’
pote ‘white’ te-pote ‘very white’
bali ‘return’ li-bali ‘return (PL)’
The reduplicated forms in (1) and those that follow are given in the convention-
al orthography, which sets the reduplicated syllable off from the stem to which
it affixes with a hyphen.
Examples of final-syllable reduplication with CVC, VC, V, and CCV(C)
are:
(^1) Although reduplication can result in more than one meaning for a single stem, only one
translation is given for any particular stem in sections 1 and.2. With verb stems, the
translation may contain the designation PL(URAL), indicating multiple occurrences of
the action, either by a single individual or multiple individuals. The meanings and func-
tions of reduplication will be discussed in section 3.