Random question of the day. Has anyone done a study/published a paper on the indonesian infix -w- (alternatively -u-). Like in panas vs pwanas and bagus vs bwagus. I think it comes from javanese, but I can't find any literature about its use in Javanese either.
I heard it all the time, especially in East Java, and occasionally I see it written to, but I can't seem to find anything actually about it. Like it is a feature that everyone seems to know and understand when someone else uses it, but no one officially recognizes it as a real thing.
I'm a just crazy thinking that this is an actual productive infixation? Is my analysis of it being an intensifier wrong? Do people actually understand it whenever it is used, or only in lexicalized words? And most importantly, why has no one studied this? It seems like a surely some Malayacist would have done a paper on it by now. If not, I guess I have a possible research paper to write, if I had time and was actually in a lingustics program.
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