Nominal morphology 183
(7) Geddhang (se) re-mera jiya kodu e-massa' gallu.
banana REL RED-red this should OV-cook before
‘These red bananas should be cooked first (before being eaten).’
Finally, plurality need not be expressed grammatically at all. The a-sentences in
(4) and (5) may be translated ‘Those cats stole some fish’ and ‘These bananas
should be cooked first’ simply by virtue of the discourse context. If it is clear
from the speech situation that plural entities are the speaker’s intent, the speaker
need not indicate that overtly. This would hold for (6) and (7) as well. If the
adjectives in (6) and (7) were not reduplicated, the NPs would be interpreted as
singular or plural depending on the discourse context.
The only other instances of plurality marked directly on a noun are the
exceptional cases of the interrogatives sapa'an and apa'an, plural counterparts
of sapa ‘who’ and apa ‘what’, as in (8) and (9).
(8) Sapa'an se la mangkat dha' Sorbaja?
who.PL REL already leave to Surabaya
‘Who have left for Surabaya?’
(9) Apa'an se e-belli Romlah?
what.PL REL OV-buy Romlah
‘What did Romlah buy?’
The use of sapa'an and apa'an indicates that the speaker expects a plural an-
swer. The structure and range of interrogatives is discussed in Chapter 14.
2.2. Nominal derivation
The morphology of derived nouns is detailed in Chapter 4 section 1.2. The ma-
jor affixes include those in (10-14).
(10) ka-...-an
a. abstract nominal
badha ‘exist’ kabadha'an ‘existence’
toron ‘descend’ katoronan ‘progeny’
penter ‘smart’ kapenterran ‘intelligence’
b. location
camat ‘district head’ kacamadan ‘district’
raja ‘king’ karaja'an ‘kingdom’
tedhung ‘sleep’ katedhungan ‘place to sleep/bed’