A Grammar of Madurese

48 Chapter 2 Phonology

(60) tada ‘dance’ [panadɤ ‘dancer’

uu ‘point’ [panɔu] ‘pointer/hand of a clock’

kakan ‘eat’ [paakan] ‘utensil’

parɛna ‘command’ [pamarɛnaan] ‘government’

(61) pikɤl ‘rob’ [pampikɤl] ‘robber’

bɤki ‘distribute’ [pambɤkijɤn] ‘distribution’

ɤgɤ ‘guard’ [paɤgɤ] ‘guard’

kɤris ‘line’ [pakɤris] ‘ruler’

nɛsɛr ‘love/pity’ [pannɛsɛr] ‘love-gift’/’dowry’
arəp ‘hope’ [paarəp] ‘hope’

Aspiration. Another process sensitive to morpheme boundaries is aspiration. In
this process a stop is aspirated when the following morpheme is vowel initial.
As there are no prefixes that end with stops, this aspiration only takes place on
root/stems that end in a stop. It has been proposed (Stevens 1968, Cohn 1993)
that there are no root-final aspirated or voiced stops. Therefore, this aspiration
process likely affects only voiceless stops. Informally, the process can be cha-
racterized as:

(62) Aspiration

Cstop  Cstop /__ + V

Aspiration is illustrated in (63).

(63) nɔɔp + a  [nɔɔpɤ] ‘open (irr.)’

nɔlak + a  [nɔlakɤ] ‘refuse (irr.)’

ɤwɤp + an  [ɤwɤpɤn] ‘answer’

sɛmprɔ + an  [sɛmprɔɤn] ‘spray’

maka +   [makai] ‘leave often’

maək +   [maəkki] ‘strike repeatedly’

As is clear in all of the cases in (63), aspiration creates the environment for a
high vowel; thus, the non-high vowels in the underlying forms of the irrealis -a,
nominalizing -an, and iterative - suffixes are realized as high vowels. Addi-

tionally, gemination is induced in the iterative form [matəkki] ‘strike repeated-

ly’ to satisfy the constraint on  occurring only in closed syllables.

For some speakers, this aspiration process appears to be optional in some