18 Chapter 2 Phonology
1.2 Vowels
Identifying the inventory of vowels is a more complicated story. By Stevens’
estimate, roughly 95% of the Madurese lexical items in his corpus employ the
eight-vowel inventory given in the following chart:
front^ central^ back^high i (^) ɨ u
ɤ^
mid ɛ ə ɔ
low a (^)
These can be considered the ‘primary’ surface vowels of Madurese. Due to a
system of paired alternating vowels, the vowels that are contrastive can be iden-
tified as those that are in bold. This system is detailed in section 4. Also, the
precise phonetic realization of some of the vowels is subject to some variation
among speakers and perhaps across dialects. Some of this variation is discussed
in subsequent sections as well. The primary vowels are as follows.
/i/ high front unrounded vowel
[i] in open and closed syllables
[bijasa] ‘usual’
[paḍi] ‘rice plant’
[gi] ‘yet’
[] in some closed syllables (subject to inter- and intra-speaker variation)
[bnta] ‘star’
[kppɔn] ‘confused’
// mid front lax unrounded vowel
[] in closed and open syllables
[kɛnɛ] ‘small’
[ɛa] ‘remember’
[saktɛ] ‘magic power’
[e] in some open syllables (subject to inter- and intra-speaker variation)
[se] ‘relative particle’
[reja] ‘that’