250 Chapter 9 VPs and verbal marking
analysis of syntactically transitive verbs. One voice has been referred to in the
literature as active, actor voice, actor focus, actor trigger and others. This voice
is indicated by the morphology associated with verbs in canonical transitive
clauses in which the agent is the subject, as in (1a). In opposition stands the
passive, object voice, object focus, object trigger, and others indicated by the
morphology associated with the same set of verbs in clauses in which an argu-
ment other than the agent is subject, as in (1b).
These pairs, illustrated again in (2), on the surface strongly resemble the
active/passive opposition found in Western languages and many other languag-
es of the world. (Specifically, the basic word order found in these clauses is
identical to that in English.)
(2) a. Bibbi' nenggu na'-kana'.
aunt AV.watch RED-child
‘Auntie watched the children.’
b. Na'-kana' e-tenggu Bibbi'.
RED-child OV-watch aunt
‘Auntie watched the children./The children were watched by Auntie.’
1.1 Actor voice
The morphology associated with canonical transitive verbs with agentive sub-
jects is referred to as ‘actor voice’. This morphology takes two forms: (1) the
nasal prefix ng- and its phonologically-conditioned variants, which it shares
with Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, and other Indonesian languages; and (2)
the prefix a-, which is unique to Madurese.
The nasal prefix is used with a large number of predicates. A very limited
list is given in (3).
(3) Transitive verbs taking ng- actor voice morphology
root actor voice
enom ‘drink’ ngenom
rosak ‘ruin’ ngrosak
ladine ‘serve’ ngladine^1
baca ‘read’ maca
toles ‘write’ noles
(^1) ladine is a derived form, e being the 'locative' suffix discussed at length in Chapter 10.
What is more, ngladine is an alternate form of the more common form aladine 'serve',
which takes the a- actor voice prefix discussed presently. Most of the few instances of
ng-l are less common variants of forms with the a- prefix.