Syllable structure and phonotactic constraints 25
The opposite correspondence obtains in some cognates. Indonesian /a/ is // in
Madurese. Due to the restriction on schwa, this occurs only in closed syllables.
(11) Madurese Indonesian
[sənnə] [səna] ‘happy’
[maləm] [malam] ‘night’
[kərrəp] [kərap] ‘often’
[takəp] [tangkap] ‘catch’
The words ‘happy’ and ‘often’ illustrate an alternative to the /ə/ ~ /a/ correspon-
dence. Rather than a phonemic /a/ where Indonesian has schwa in an open syl-
lable, the onset of the following syllable is geminated, creating the proper envi-
ronment for Madurese /ə/.
3. Syllable structure and phonotactic constraints
The majority of Madurese roots are disyllabic, made up of CV and CVC syl-
lables.^13 Syllables can, however, take any of the following forms.
(12) Licit syllables
V a.bɤ.lɤ ‘say’, ɛ.pɔ.kɔl ‘hit’, a.ɛ ‘water’
CV bɤ.ca ‘read’, bl.li ‘buy’, sɔ.rat ‘letter’
VC əm.pa’four’, ɛn.tar ‘go’, ka.ɔs ‘t-shirt’
CVC kɛ.rɛm ‘send’, pu.rus ‘dog’, bɤɔ ‘time’, tu.ɛ ‘story’
CCV pra.ɔ ‘boat’, gla.nɔn ‘excuse me’
CCVC ɛs.trɛ‘wife’, trɛs.na ‘love’, klam.pi ‘clothes’
The clusters in CCV(C) syllables come largely but not exclusively from two
sources: forms that have undergone vowel deletion and borrowings. As is
shown below, [praɔ], [glanɔn], [rɛsna] and [klampi] are derived from /paraɔ/,
/galanɔn/, /aresna/ and /kalampi/, respectively. [ɛs.trɛ] is borrowed from Indo-
nesian.
Preference for disyllabic roots manifests itself in the large number of
words with initial əC 1 C 1 which correspond to Indonesian monosyllabic roots
with initial C 1. Some of these are borrowings from Dutch and English. A few of
these are given in (13).
(^13) There are many words of three syllables and more, but the majority of these are forms
with one or more affixes.