THE JAVANESE SUFFIX –(n)e

Abstract

While in most instances the use of the Javanese ‘possessive’ suffix –(n)e in the East Javanese regency of Jember conforms to descriptions of it in textbooks on Javanese, one particular usage, in connection with among others titles and kinship terms, obeys not only grammatical rules but also reflects social concerns such as relative age, status, and other hierarchical notions that inform Javanese society. This social aspect of the use of the suffix raises some interesting questions concerning the objectivation of persons during interaction, for example, referring to them as social objects or categories rather than as persons. The relationship between these objects or categories reflects the social structural ideas that underlie Javanese society. The properties defining the social entities involved may be relatively permanent, though at other times they may be contrastive or contextual. In both cases, the suffix is relational and objectifies the thing it is attached to, turning it into a social category. The suffix –(n)e therefore reflects social concerns as well as linguistic ones.

Keywords:

• Javanese
• possessive suffix
• associative suffix
• objectivation
• social relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

* I want to thank Dr Kris Lehman, Dr Joe Errington, Dr Rosemary Gianno, and the anonymous IMW peer reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Any remaining errors or unclarities are of course mine.

¹ –(n)e is the common or ngoko form. The polite or krama form is –(n)ipun, which I have rarely heard used by ordinary people in daily life. In the ngoko form, the suffix can appear as either –ne or –e, depending on whether the word it is applied to ends in a vowel (-ne) or a consonant (-e) (Arps et al. 2000: 43, 99).

²Many consider the Using to be a separate ethnic group, while others see them as a sub-group of the Javanese. Many Using themselves see their lexicon and culture as differing considerably from those of the Javanese of both Central and East Java (cf. Pranoto 2015: 14–15). The question is furthermore not just an anthropological or linguistic one, as it also has local political implications.

³Although the data used here come primarily from the Javanese spoken in East Java, my observations apply equally to the Sundanese language of West Java, and the Using language. Where appropriate, examples from these languages will be used illustratively.

⁴The decline in the ability to use formal Javanese has also been noted elsewhere, and was a topic of discussion at the 2014 Kongres Bahasa Jawa (Taufiqurrahman 2005; Balai Bahasa 2014). This is not a unique phenomenon. During fieldwork in West Java in 1970–71, a teacher commented that villagers in particular who were unfamiliar with the polite forms of Sundanese would make grammatical errors when trying to construct polite sentences. In the Banten area of West Java in the late 1990s, informants preferred to use Indonesian rather than formal Sundanese.

⁵These include labels of both ascribed roles, such as kinship relations (e.g. pakdhé: parent's elder brother) or membership in the nobility (raden), and achieved ones like Ibu Guru (Mrs Teacher) or Pak Haji (man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca). Note that (ba)pak and ibu literally mean father and mother, but are used here as polite forms of address or reference used for someone ‘of higher age or social standing’ (Robson and Wibisono 2002: 276, 533).

⁶Descola (1996: 86) writes of social objectivation as involving the process ‘from which  …  society draws its concepts of self and otherness  …  establishing boundaries [and] ascribing identities  … ’.

⁷The krama (polite) form however is considered acceptable (Arps et al. 2000: 114). Very briefly, certain crucial words and terms in among others Javanese are marked for politeness, and are classed as either ngoko (common) or krama. There are various works that discuss these levels of politeness (cf. Geertz 1960: 248–60; Uhlenbeck 1970). For an analysis of them in Sundanese and Madurese, see Abas (1971), Stevens (1965) and Wessing (1974).

⁸Mu, from kamu, is a possessive pronoun used towards intimates and inferiors.

⁹An anonymous reader asked whether punika tasipun kula would not be more appropriate. Two original informants still maintained that iki tasé kula was acceptable krama Javanese, though one of them added that his was a form of Javanese spoken in urban Jember. Both accepted the form suggested by the reader as perhaps better and more krama. These hesitations could reflect a lack of familiarity with the polite forms of Javanese as was discussed earlier.

¹⁰(19) Spoken by a 14-year-old Using girl to a 6-year-old Using boy (mak is the Using word for mother); (20) spoken by both a 2-year-old Using girl and a 6-year-old Using boy; (21) spoken by a 5-year-old boy of mixed Using, Javanese, and Madurese parentage; (22) spoken by a 23-year-old young man of mixed Using and Javanese parentage, responding to being called by his mother (cf. Ras 1982: 151).

¹¹Ras (1982: 20) does not call the examples he uses adjectives. Rather, he uses the phrase niet-substantieven (non-nouns), even though the words gedhé (large) and suwé (long [time]) that he uses are clearly adjectives. See also Sneddon (1996: 304–5) for equivalent Indonesian usage.

¹²Husbands should ideally be older than their wives, although at least these days this rule is sometimes ignored. In conversation, however, indicators of senior and junior status continue to be used (see below).

¹³There is also the krama inggil (very polite) dalem, but while important, this level of courtesy need not be discussed here.

¹⁴Underlyingly all sentences can be said to have the construction ‘I say to you’ or ‘I say about him/her’, which would be where the choice of pronouns, and thus the level of politeness of the sentence as a whole, are determined. Since this establishes the nature of the association between the persons involved, the underlying sentence can also be said to be performative in the sense of Austin (1977).

¹⁵But also Javanese, Using, Balinese, Madurese, etc.

¹⁶Even though, as J. Errington comments (pers. comm., 30 May 2013), many polite pronouns such as sampean (you [polite]) or panjengan (you [very polite]) originated as nominal forms. Their use here labels a person as part of a social category vis-à-vis the speaker.

¹⁷In the plural, these terms are, respectively, aranjeun, aranjeunna, maraneh and maranehna (see Wessing 1976).

¹⁸Errington (pers. comm., 30 May 2013) notes that this may be peculiar to East Java since in Central Java dhèwèk is not used pronominally.

¹⁹Errington (pers. comm., 30 May 2013) notes that historically rika was a locative with an added deictic, roughly meaning ‘over there’. This may account for the occasional use in East Javanese Indonesian of sana (there) as a second person singular pronoun. Sneddon (1996: 189) also approaches this as a locative, indicating a position relative to the speaker, for example, ‘far off’ removed from the speaker, but does not explore the social implications of this usage.

²⁰Alternatively, once they have children, the wife might call her husband paké (father) and answer to emaké or buné (mother), emphasising their parental status. Errington (pers. comm., 30 May 2013) observes that in Central Java a mother and father refer to each other as mbokne and bapakne, either when addressing each other or when speaking to the children. This, he writes, is phonologically peculiar in that they use the (n), which elsewhere only appears epenthetically. It may stem from a previous use of teknonomy in which the full form would have been mbokne/bapakne anak (mother/father of the child). The Using, furthermore, commonly address a younger daughter or sister as endhuk, which literally means small female child, but tends to be used to address even grown daughters or sisters, as well as girls of the appropriate age in general. It emphasises the relative age of the addressee vis-à-vis the speaker.

²¹These social categories are presupposed rather than named. They are necessary to clarify who is being referred to.

Additional information

Author biography

Robert Wessing received his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1974 from the University of Illinois in Urbana, USA. His research, conducted in West and East Java, Aceh, and Madura, has dealt primarily with symbolism, as well as with the social implications of belief systems. His publications include Cosmology and social behavior in a West Javanese settlement (1978), The soul of ambiguity: the tiger in Southeast Asia (1986), and ‘A community of spirits. People, ancestors and nature spirits in Java’, Crossroads (2006: 11–111). See www.robert-wessing.com.