254 Chapter 9 VPs and verbal marking
(14) Intransitive verbs with actor voice morphology
root actor voice
lako ‘work’ alako
berka' ‘run’ aberka'
tare ‘dance’ atare
abber ‘fly’ ngabber
bala ‘say’ abala
lonca' ‘jump’ alonca'
oca' ‘say’ ngoca'
maen ‘play’ amaen
tangdang ‘dance’ nangdang
rangka' ‘creep’ arangka'
Notable in (14) is the fact that nearly all intransitives taking actor voice mor-
phology take the a- prefix. A very small minority take ng-: ngabber ‘fly’, nang-
dang ‘dance’, ngoca' ‘say’, and some others. Additionally, derived intransitive
verbs almost exclusively take the a- prefix. These derived stems are illustrated
in Chapter 4. Some examples include:
(15) Derived intransitive verbs with actor voice morphology
root actor voice
daftar ‘list’ adaftar ‘register’
bine ‘wife’ abine ‘marry’
saba ‘rice field’ asaba ‘work a rice field’
tane ‘farm’ atane ‘farm’
sakola ‘school’ asakola ‘go to school’
Given the preponderance of a- with intransitive verbs, whether this prefix
a- and the a- of transitive verbs is one and the same may be questioned. There
is, after all, a great deal of homophony in the inventory of Madurese mor-
phemes. The a- of intransitives is often associated with the intransitive active
ber- of Indonesian. However, a- with intransitives and a- with transitives seem
to have the same semantic ingredient of volitionality. There appears to be no
notion of transitivity associated with it. Conversely, save for the few exception-
al cases noted, as well as some additional instances, ng- has a strong association
with transitivity. In fact nearly all syntactically transitive verbs derived from
roots that take no voice morphology in normal usage take the ng- prefix, as in
(16).
(16) Actor voice morphology with derived transitive verbs
root actor voice
entar ‘go’ ngentare ‘go to’
esto ‘love’ ngestowe ‘love’