Use of the vocabularies 481
(26) Nape gulu-epon dika gi' ng-anglo?
what neck-DEF you still AV-sick
‘Does your neck still hurt?’
(27) Nape le'er-ra dika gi' sake'?
what neck-DEF you still sick
‘Does your neck still hurt?’
In (26), tengnga'an vocabulary combines with alos (gulu, -epon, and nganglo),
as the speaker wishes to show increased respect to the addressee. This contrasts
with (27) in which kasar words are used for these concepts and the speaker af-
fords less respect to the listener.
Maukmam (2007) provides the following illustrative examples. In the
market, a buyer might ask as vendor the following:
(28) Gi' badha jila-na, Buk?
still exist tongue-DEF eld.sister
‘Is there any tongue, Ma’am?’
In (28), the kasar word jila ‘tongue’ is used, but the use of Buk as a term of
address denotes a modicum of respect. If the buyer wishes to show a bit more
respect, he or she will substitute the alos word for ‘tongue’, elat, as in
(29) Gi' badha elad-da, Buk?
still exist tongue-DEF eld.sister
‘Is there any tongue, Ma’am?’
Note in (29) that although the alos word elat ‘tongue’ is used, the alos definite
suffix -epon is not. Thus, again, there is quite an admixture of vocabularies.
This clearly shows the difficulty with attempting to establish rigorously
distinct levels for Madurese. However, there are have proposals for multiple,
distinct, clearly-defined levels for Javanese, most notably by Geertz (1960),
who posits six levels, and Poedjosoedarmo (1968), who posits nine. According
to these proposals, a single level must be selected and adhered to in a given
speech situation, which is determined solely in terms of the social relationships
of the interlocutors. Uhlenbeck (1978), however, argues against any such analy-
sis as portraying the system of vocabularies as being much more rigid than they
in fact are. The use of the various vocabularies is more fluid than this in any
given interaction and the particular choice of a ngoko (= kasar) form or a krama
(= alos) form can depend on the lexical item itself. Myhill (1994) demonstrates
this in a quantitative study of the use of the Javanese vocabularies in dialogues
in a contemporary anthology of short stories--showing that many sentences in
the sample do not strictly speaking adhere to the descriptions of the intermediate