Allophones of /a/

One tendency is for /a/ before a velar consonant such as /k/ or /ŋ/ or final /h/ to have a relatively back quality.

A further example of variation in the realisation of /a/ involves the prefixes ba-, maN- and paN-, such as in batangkar ‘argue’, mamigang ‘hold’, maniup ‘blow’, and pangambara ‘traveller’ from the passage. In most tokens of these words, the vowel in the first syllable has a relatively close quality, so it might be represented as [ə]. However, in mamigang and also the third token of pangambara, the vowel has a more open quality, so it is [a]. The vowel plot with these prefixes shown separately from /a/ and labelled as ‘e’ is shown below. It can be seen that the quality of these vowels substantially overlaps with /u/, while there is reduced overlap compared with the previous vowel plot between /u/ and the remaining tokens of /a/.

In fact, the Brunei Malay dictionary (DBP 2007) uses ‘e’ to represent the vowel in these prefixes, so for example mamigang ‘hold’ and maniup ‘blow’ are shown with ‘e’ in the first syllable.

However, here we prefer to use ‘a’ rather than ‘e’ in these words as this is consistent with the claim that there are only three vowels in Brunei Malay, /i a u/, even if we acknowledge that /a/ may sometimes be pronounced as [ə]. Furthermore, this is how other scholars represent these words, so for example Jaludin (2003: 56) discusses the pronunciation of mamigang, Clynes (2001) includes example sentences with mambali ‘buy’ and manjual ‘sell’, and Mataim (2007: 182) offers a detailed analysis of the pronunciation of mambawa ‘carry’.

Finally, as mentioned above, in the recording of the passage, mamigang and one token of pangambara are pronounced with [a] in the first syllable, so the use of an open vowel in these prefixes does sometimes occur.