260 Chapter 9 VPs and verbal marking
ly-informed analyses take the analysis of this suffix (as well as -agi below) to
be an applicative morpheme, a morpheme that increases the syntactic valence of
the predicate by introducing an additional argument or making a prepositional
argument a more core NP argument.^9 The suffixes are largely assumed not to
be part of the voice system. There are some reasons for revisiting this view and
perhaps considering -e and -agi part of the voice system to a limited extent.
There are some similarities in the functions of the suffixes and voice morpholo-
gy in Philippine languages and Malagasy. These will be detailed in Chapter 10
section 4, when the full range of uses of -e and -agi are taken up.
- Irrealis mood
Like Javanese but unlike other closely-related Indonesian-type languages, Ma-
durese has a verbal affix that signals irrealis mood. The suffix -a is used to de-
note unrealized actions, including the future. Without additional contextual
specification, simple sentences with verbs marked for the irrealis are generally
translated as future; so with no discourse specified time, the sentences in (33)
and (34) are given future interpretations.
(33) Siti entar-a dha' Sorbaja.
Siti go-IRR to Surabaya
‘Siti will go to Surabaya.’
(34) Deni nompa'-a sapedha-na.
Deni AV.ride-IRR bicycle-DEF
‘Deni will ride his bicycle.’
When used with a past time adverbial, it denotes an unrealized action, though
there may still be some doubt on the part of the speaker as to whether or not the
action took place. For example, in (35), it may or may not be the case that Deni
rode his bicycle yesterday.
(35) Deni nompa'-a sapedha-na ba'ari'.
Deni AV.ride-IRR bicycle-DEF yesterday
‘Deni was going to ride his bicycle yesterday (but probably didn’t).’
(^9) Core arguments are those most closely associated with a predicate (such as subject
and direct object) and occur with no syntactic or prepositional marking. See Foley and
van Valin (1984:77-80). The term will be used here informally.