Orthography 51
(70) ka + ɔrɔn + an [kəɔrɔnan] ‘descendant’
pa + sənnə [pəssənnə ‘make happy’
sa + raɔs [sərraɔs] ‘one hundred’
Sutoko et al. (1998) present data from a small number of forms that indicate this
process of vowel reduction occurs with more frequency in the Bangkalan and
Sampang areas than the Pamekasan and Sumenep areas.
The second vowel reduction process reduces [a] to [] in the nominaliz-
ing suffix -an when it immediately precedes the definite suffix -na.
(71) ka +ɔrɔn + an + na [kaɔrɔnənna] ‘descendant’
ka + sak+ an + na [kasakjənna] ‘magic power’
7. Stress
Word stress is not a salient feature of Madurese, and receives little mention in
the literature, e.g. Stevens (1968) mentions it only in passing. As pointed out by
Ogloblin (1986), it is likely that the intonation group is the lowest relevant pho-
nological unit in Madurese (which roughly coincides with what Uhlenbeck
(1975) refers to as the ‘sentence segment’ in Javanese). Words uttered in isola-
tion exhibit stress on almost any syllable in the root; in consecutive repetitions
of single words stress may fall on the first syllable in the first instantiation and
on the second in the next and vice versa. In the chapters that follow, intonation
and its role in the overall syntactic structure and semantic interpretation of a
particular sentence is noted when salient. However, at this point there have been
few investigations into prosody in Madurese, and work in this area remains for
the future.
- Orthography
A number of writing systems have been used for Madurese over the years. Few
have proven completely satisfactory for representing the variety of sounds in the
language. Some have been more phonemically based but the majority take into
account some of the results of the phonological rules outlined above.
Initially, Madurese was written in the kawi syllabary used to write Java-
nese. Like a number of the writing systems to follow, the Javanese syllabary
was not entirely satisfactory. Because Madurese contains three series of stops
(voiceless, voiceless aspirated, and voiced) and Javanese contains only two
(voiceless and so-called breathy), the Javanese syllabary does not include a suf-