Javanese

Last Updated: 2020-06-30

Note: /ɔ/ is not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.

Background

Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Western Malayo-Polynesian / Sundic / Javanese

• Also called Djawa, Javanese is spoken in the Banten, Central Java, and East Java provinces of Indonesia. It is also spoken in Yogyakarta and Sumatra island, which are also located within Indonesia.

Phonology

Consonants

• Suharno (1982) identifies /q/ instead of /ʔ/, but describes the consonant as glottal; Nothofer (1975) also identifies /q/, but gives it the same place of articulation as /h/. For these reasons, I have followed the pattern of the authors (e.g. Wolff, John U. and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo 1982; Horne 1974; Robson 2014) who prefer /ʔ/.

• I have chosen to include dental and retroflex stops, but not alveolar stops. The authors I’ve read have disagreed about which of the aforementioned stops do occur in Javanese; all agree, however, that exactly two of the three places of articulation are represented. Dental and retroflex is the pair that I find to be likeliest.

  • Horne (1974): Dental, alveolar
    
  • Nothofer (1975): Alveolar, retroflex(?)
    
  • Robson (2014): Dental, retroflex
    
  • Suharno (1982): Dental, retroflex
    
  • Wolff, John U. and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo (1982): Dental, alveolar
    
    
    
• Regarding the prenasalized stops, Wolff, John U. and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo (1982) do not depict /ᵑɡ/ as assimilating, although Nothofer (1975) and Horne (1974) do. Given that (at least some) other prenasalized stops feature nasal assimilation, and given that /ŋ/ is phonemic in Javanese, I have followed Wolff’s example. Although I have not seen explicit attestation of nasal assimilation in the rest of the prenasalized stops, I find it to be likely enough that I have included it in my ruleset.
• Although Wolff, John U. and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo (1982) account for the lenis continuants (pharyngealized) /wh/, /nh/, /lh/, /rh/, and /jh/, they are unattested elsewhere, so I have not included them in the ruleset.
  

• /f/ and /z/ appear in loanwords (Wolff, John U. and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo 1982).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t̪ d̪		ʈ ɖ	c ɟ	k ɡ	ʔ
Stops (prenasalized)	ᵐb	ⁿd̪		ⁿɖ	ⁿɟ	ᵑɡ
Fricatives			s				h
Nasals	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Trills			r
Approximants	w		l		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Vowels may occur successively, but they do not form diphthongs when doing so (Suharno 1982, 2).
• Javanese is characterized as having a “neutral” vowel (Robson 2014, xii), often represented as /ə/. However, this neutral vowel in Javanese is not truly reduced, and based on the chart by Wolff, John U. and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo (1982), it appears to represent a sound lower than that of schwa (p. 3). For this reason, I have opted to use /ɜ/.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
High-Mid	e		o
Low-Mid	ɛ	ɜ	ɔ
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/b/
c	/c/	described by Horne (1974) as /t̪s/
d	/d̪/
e	/ɜ/
é	/e/
è	/ɛ/
f	/f/	only in loanwords; sometimes replaced by /p/ (see Horne 1974, xi)
g	/ɡ/
h	/h/
i	/i/
j	/ɟ/	described by Horne (1974) as /d̪z/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
ô	/ɔ/	not present in the Crúbadán corpus
p	/p/
q	/ʔ/	only in loanwords
r	/r/
s	/s/
t	/t̪/
u	/u/
v	/f/	only in loanwords; per Horne (1974), is an alternate spelling of ⟨f⟩
w	/w/
y	/j/
Multigraph
dh	/ɖ/	some transcriptions use ⟨ḍ⟩
mb	/ᵐb/
nd	/ⁿd̪/
ng	/ŋ/
nj	/ᶮɟ/
ny	/ɲ/
th	/ʈ/	some transcriptions use ⟨ṭ⟩
ndh	/ⁿɖ/
ngg	/ᵑɡ/

Javanese Script

• A ruleset for the Javanese abugida is also provided (jv-jscript.rules). Because Crúbadán’s only Javanese corpus uses the Latin script, the Javanese-script ruleset is not as thoroughly tested as its Latin-script counterpart (no corresponding verify file).
• Despite being present in the Latin script, /ɛ/ does not seem to be attested in the Javanese script.

Consonant Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
ꦲ	/h/	also used as the zero consonant in word-initial contexts
ꦤ	/n/
ꦕ	/c/
ꦫ	/r/
ꦏ	/k/
ꦢ	/d̪/
ꦠ	/t̪/
ꦱ	/s/
ꦮ	/w/
ꦭ	/l/
ꦥ	/p/
ꦣ	/ɖ/
ꦗ	/ɟ/
ꦪ	/j/
ꦚ	/ɲ/
ꦩ	/m/
ꦒ	/ɡ/
ꦧ	/b/
ꦛ	/ʈ/
ꦔ	/ŋ/
Consonant Diacritic		these predominantly form the codas of their syllables
ꦀ	/m/
ꦁ	/ŋ/
ꦂ	/r/
ꦃ	/h/
ꦽ	/rɜ/
ꦾ	/j/
ꦿ	/r/
꧀	∅	nullifies the vowel in its syllable
Vowel Grapheme
ꦄ	/a/
ꦆ	/i/
ꦈ	/u/
ꦌ	/e/
ꦎ	/o/
Vowel Diacritic		in the absence of a vowel diacritic, /a/ is taken as the ‘default’ vowel for a syllable
ꦶ	/i/
ꦸ	/u/
ꦺ	/e/
ꦺ	/o/
ꦼ	/ɜ/
Newer Orthographic Variation (Aksara)
ꦉ	/rɜ/
ꦊ	/lɜ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables take the format (CC)V(C) (Horne 1974, xiv).

Lenition rules

• /h/ is deleted intervocalically if between non-identical vowels (Robson 2014, xvi).
• Word-final /k/ debuccalizes to [ʔ] (ibid.).

Misc. Rules

• Tense vowels become lax in closed syllables (Horne 1974, xi).
• The following consonants do not occur word-finally (Suharno 1982, 6):
  • Voiced stops (due to word-final devoicing)
  • Palatal and retroflex consonants
  • Glides
  • /h/
  • Any consonant cluster
• Conversely:
  • /e/ and /ɛ/ do not occur word-finally; /a/ only occurs word-finally in the word ⟨ora⟩ (Suharno 1982, 6).
  • Except in interjections, /ɜ/ never occurs word-finally or before /ʔ/ (Nothofer 1975, 9).
  • /ʔ/ always appears word-finally, except in interjections where it can be intervocalic (ibid.).
  • /h/ only occurs word-initially in interjections or loanwords (Robson 2014, xvi).
  • /ʔ/ inserted before the suffix ⟨-aké⟩ or after the prefix ⟨sa-⟩ (ibid.).
  • Nasal prefixes added to many verb forms (Robson 2014, 12).

References

Horne, Elinor Clark. 1974. Javanese-English Dictionary. Yale University Press.

Nothofer, Bernd. 1975. The Reconstruction of Proto-Malayo-Javonic.

Robson, Stuart. 2014. Javanese Grammar for Students: A Graded Introduction, 3rd Edition. Monash University Publishing.

Suharno, Ignatius. 1982. “Chapter 1: The Javanese Phonemes.” In A Descriptive Study of Javanese.

Wolff, John U., and Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo. 1982. Cornell University Publishing.