A Grammar of Madurese

Basic inventory 15

/k/ voiceless aspirated velar stop

[k] in syllable-initial position, does not occur in syllable-final position

[kɤɤj] ‘make’

[pikɤl] ‘rob’

/g/ voiced velar stop
[g] in syllable-initial position, does not occur in syllable-final position
(except geminates)
[gɤi] ‘salary’

[ɤgɔ] ‘wake up’

// glottal stop^3

[] occurs only in syllable-final position

[ana ‘child’
[raja] ‘people’

/m/ voiced bilabial nasal
[m] in syllable-initial and syllable-final position
[mɛra] ‘red’
[maɛn] ‘play’
[kɛrɛm] ‘send’
[ɔɔm] ‘punish’

/n/ voiced alveolar nasal
[n] in syllable-initial and syllable-final position
[nə] ‘at’

[nasɛ] ‘rice’

[kakan] ‘eat’
[kɤn] ‘until’

(^3) Word-final [] and [k] are virtually auditorily indistinguishable even to native speak-
ers (leading to frequent inconsistency in spelling). Their phonemic identity is revealed
when a suffix is added to the stem, however, resulting in [] for phonemic // and [k]
for /k/, as in:
(i) sab‘put’ saba ‘put’ (irrealis)
canḍk ‘hold’ canḍk ‘hold’ (irrealis)
The surface form of the irrealis morpheme /a/ results from the vowel raising process
described in section 4.1. Aspiration is discussed in section 6.