-i Applicative Patterns: Advanced Constraints and Register | Indonesian Grammar

Advanced -i syntax begins with a lexical fact: each established derivative decides which target is structurally privileged. Mengisi formulir selects a container or field, mendatangi rumah a visited goal, mengirimi teman surat a recipient, and menandai halaman a marked surface or item. Relativization and extraction preserve that selection; they do not turn every nearby noun into an interchangeable object.

This page concentrates on advanced constraints, agentless uses, lexical exceptions, frequency, and register. Formation, ordinary argument order, discourse choice, and aspect or negation belong to the other four pages in the -i series.

The selected target controls relative-clause shape

An actor head remains the subject of actor voice.

Petugas yang mengisi formulir itu bekerja di loket sebelah.

The officer who filled out that form works at the next counter.

Relawan yang mendatangi rumah kami membawa obat dan air bersih.

The volunteer who visited our house brought medicine and clean water.

Kurir yang mengirimi warga surat pemberitahuan sudah kembali ke kantor.

The courier who sent residents notification letters has returned to the office.

Editor yang menandai halaman tersebut meminta naskahnya dicetak ulang.

The editor who marked that page asked for the manuscript to be reprinted.

When the relative head is the selected target, careful Standard Indonesian normally uses di-...-i or pronoun-agent object voice.

Formulir yang diisi petugas tadi harus diserahkan sebelum pukul tiga.

The form the officer filled out earlier must be submitted before three.

Rumah yang kami datangi kemarin ternyata sudah kosong sejak bulan lalu.

The house we visited yesterday turned out to have been empty since last month.

Teman yang dikirimi surat oleh Sari tinggal di pulau kecil.

The friend who was sent a letter by Sari lives on a small island.

Halaman yang saya tandai memuat definisi yang perlu diperbaiki.

The page I marked contains a definition that needs correcting.

The suffix remains attached in every voice. English can relativize an object without visible verbal change; Indonesian uses diisi, kami datangi, dikirimi, and saya tandai to keep the target as the clause's privileged nonactor participant.

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Before forming a relative, write the frame with brackets: mengirimi [recipient] [theme]. Only then decide whether the head corresponds to actor, selected target, or a less privileged participant.

Extraction exposes the second participant's limits

The transferred theme after mengirimi is not the same kind of object as recipient teman. A recipient question is direct:

Siapa yang dikirimi Raka surat dari Ternate?

Who was sent a letter from Ternate by Raka?

Raka mengirimi siapa surat setebal itu?

Who did Raka send such a thick letter to? (informal question in place)

To make the letter the relative head, choose a theme-oriented kirim/mengirimkan frame.

Surat yang dikirimkan Raka kepada temannya tiba tiga hari kemudian.

The letter Raka sent to his friend arrived three days later.

Surat mana yang Raka kirimkan kepada temannya dari Ternate?

Which letter did Raka send to his friend from Ternate?

Surat yang dikirimi teman would make surat the entity receiving a friend, not the transferred theme intended here. The suffix choice fixes the mapping before extraction begins.

Material phrases behave similarly. In mengisi formulir dengan data paspor, the form is the selected target; data paspor is introduced by dengan.

Formulir mana yang diisi pemohon dengan data lama?

Which form did the applicant fill with old data?

Data yang dimasukkan pemohon ke formulir itu ternyata tidak lengkap.

The data the applicant entered into that form turned out to be incomplete.

The second example switches to theme-oriented memasukkan. A mechanical data yang diisi formulir reverses the container-content relationship.

With menandai halaman dengan stiker, the page is the marked target and the sticker is an instrument or material.

Halaman mana yang ditandai pemeriksa dengan stiker merah?

Which page did the reviewer mark with a red sticker?

Stiker yang dipakai pemeriksa untuk menandai halaman itu mudah dilepas.

The sticker the reviewer used to mark that page is easy to remove.

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Extraction cannot manufacture object status. If a participant remains inside dengan, ke, pada, or another lexical frame, retain that relation or choose a different established verb.

Agentless passives are complete and ordinary

An -i passive can omit its actor when unknown, generic, recoverable, or irrelevant.

Semua kolom wajib diisi sebelum permohonan dikirim.

All fields must be completed before the application is sent. (formal)

Rumah itu sudah didatangi dua kali, tetapi penghuninya tidak ada.

That house has already been visited twice, but its occupants were away.

Setiap pelanggan akan dikirimi kode verifikasi baru.

Every customer will be sent a new verification code.

Berkas yang belum lengkap ditandai dengan label kuning.

Incomplete files are marked with a yellow label.

These clauses do not contain a defective or “missing” English-style by-phrase. Indonesian often chooses patient-oriented voice precisely because the form, house, customer, or file matters more than the actor. An actor may be added with adjacency or oleh when discourse needs it.

Formulir tersebut diisi kemarin oleh petugas dari kantor cabang.

That form was completed yesterday by an officer from the branch office. (formal)

Halaman terakhir ditandai penyunting sebelum naskah dikirim ke percetakan.

The final page was marked by the editor before the manuscript was sent to the printer.

Productivity ends at lexical-family boundaries

The target-oriented schema is real, but it does not license free coinage. Some -i verbs have highly lexicalized meanings.

Tim belum mengetahui penyebab gangguan pada sistem pembayaran.

The team does not yet know the cause of the payment-system disruption. (formal)

Koperasi itu memiliki empat kendaraan untuk mengangkut hasil panen.

The cooperative owns four vehicles for transporting the harvest.

Banyak pembaca menyukai akhir cerita yang tidak terduga.

Many readers like the story's unexpected ending.

Petugas berhasil mengatasi kebocoran sebelum air mencapai ruang mesin.

The staff managed to deal with the leak before water reached the engine room.

The modern senses of mengetahui, memiliki, menyukai, and mengatasi cannot be generated by translating -i as “to,” “at,” or “on.” They also do not predict partners such as nonexistent mengetahkan or menyukakan with a parallel -kan meaning.

Other roots allow both suffixes but with sharply different frames:

Petugas memasuki gudang setelah alarm berhenti.

The officer enters the warehouse after the alarm stops.

Petugas memasukkan dua kotak ke gudang setelah alarm berhenti.

The officer puts two boxes into the warehouse after the alarm stops.

Memasuki selects the goal entered; memasukkan selects the themes caused to enter. This is a licensed lexical alternation, not a template that every motion root must copy.

Formal and colloquial realizations

Edited prose and careful speech use full Standard Indonesian meN-...-i, di-...-i, and object-voice stems. Relaxed urban speech, especially Jakarta-influenced varieties, often uses a bare form or -in, which can neutralize the standard -i/-kan distinction.

Pemohon mengisi formulir, petugas mendatangi rumahnya, kantor mengiriminya surat, dan pemeriksa menandai halaman yang bermasalah.

The applicant fills out a form, an officer visits the home, the office sends the applicant a letter, and a reviewer marks the problematic page. (careful/formal)

Pemohonnya isi formulir, petugasnya datangin rumah pemohon, kantor kirimin dia surat, terus pemeriksanya tandain halaman yang bermasalah.

The applicant fills out the form, the officer visits the applicant's house, the office sends them a letter, then the reviewer marks the problematic page. (informal; Jakarta-influenced)

Datangin, kirimin, and tandain are labeled conversational forms, not EYD V spellings for formal prose. Other regions have different casual patterns, and many speakers retain full standard forms in everyday conversation.

An annotated formal paragraph

Dalam tahap verifikasi, pemohon mengisi formulir elektronik, tempat tinggalnya didatangi petugas lapangan, setiap pemohon dikirimi surat konfirmasi, dan halaman yang memuat ketidaksesuaian ditandai oleh tim pemeriksa.

During verification, applicants complete an electronic form, their residence is visited by a field officer, each applicant is sent a confirmation letter, and pages containing discrepancies are marked by the review team. (formal)

Mengisi keeps the applicant as actor and the form as target-object. Passive didatangi and dikirimi suppress or background agents while promoting a goal and recipient. Ditandai oleh tim pemeriksa states a delayed, complex agent. All voice prefixes and suffixes remain attached; locative di would remain separate in a phrase such as di kantor.

A colloquial exchange

A: Berkasnya sudah beres? B: Sudah. Aku isi formulirnya, datangin rumahnya, kirimin temanku surat, terus tandain halaman yang harus dia cek.

A: Is the file all sorted? B: Yes. I filled out the form, visited the house, sent my friend a letter, then marked the pages they need to check. (informal; Jakarta-influenced)

The exchange naturally corresponds to the standard families mengisi formulir, mendatangi rumah, mengirimi teman surat, and menandai halaman. Register changes their realization, not the underlying participant mapping.

Corpus-realistic frequency

There is no responsible frequency claim for “-i” as one homogeneous construction. Very frequent lexical items such as memiliki, mengetahui, mengikuti, and mengalami dominate many corpora, while transparent mengirimi or distributed menulisi occur in narrower contexts. Searches for final i also mix true suffixation, vowel-final bases, and lexicalized histories.

Genre matters. Full forms predominate in edited journalism, administration, and academic prose; colloquial -in is conspicuous in dialogue, messaging, and social media, particularly in Jakarta-influenced speech. Any quantitative comparison must hold the lexical verb, region, genre, and voice constant.

Four diagnostic repairs

These pairs isolate the core frames without changing register or adding unnecessary participants.

❌ Pemohon mengisi data paspor dengan formulir di loket tiga.

Incorrect for the intended event — this reverses the form and the data in the mengisi frame.

✅ Pemohon mengisi formulir dengan data paspor di loket tiga.

The applicant fills out the form with passport data at counter three.

❌ Relawan mendatangi ke rumah keluarga itu setelah magrib.

Incorrect — the visited goal directly follows mendatangi without ke.

✅ Relawan mendatangi rumah keluarga itu setelah magrib.

The volunteer visits the family's house after sunset.

❌ Saya mengirimi surat kepada teman lama dari Banda Aceh.

Incorrect for the recipient-oriented frame — the recipient must immediately follow mengirimi.

✅ Saya mengirimi teman lama surat dari Banda Aceh.

I send an old friend a letter from Banda Aceh.

❌ Editor menandai pada halaman ketiga dengan pensil biru.

Incorrect — the marked page is the direct object, so pada is not retained.

✅ Editor menandai halaman ketiga dengan pensil biru.

The editor marks the third page with a blue pencil.

Common Mistakes

Retaining a goal preposition after mendatangi

❌ Tim survei mendatangi ke rumah warga pada hari Senin.

Incorrect — rumah warga is already the selected goal-object of mendatangi.

✅ Tim survei mendatangi rumah warga pada hari Senin pagi.

The survey team visits residents' homes on Monday morning.

Relativizing the secondary theme as though dikirimi selected it

❌ Surat yang dikirimi Rina oleh kantor itu tiba kemarin.

Incorrect for a letter sent to Rina — dikirimi selects Rina as recipient-subject.

✅ Surat yang dikirimkan kantor kepada Rina tiba kemarin sore.

The letter the office sent to Rina arrived yesterday afternoon.

Treating colloquial -in as edited spelling

❌ Dalam laporan resmi, petugas datangin rumah dan tandain berkas.

Incorrect register and spelling for an official report.

✅ Dalam laporan resmi, petugas mendatangi rumah dan menandai berkas.

In the official report, the officer visits the house and marks the file. (formal)

Inventing an -i derivative from an English preposition

❌ Saya membicarai kepala bagian setelah rapat.

Nonstandard coinage for ‘talk to the department head.’

✅ Saya berbicara kepada kepala bagian setelah rapat selesai.

I spoke to the department head after the meeting ended.

Calling an agentless passive ungrammatical

❌ “Semua kolom sudah diisi” tidak lengkap karena tidak menyebut pengisi.

Incorrect analysis — an omitted generic or irrelevant actor is fully licensed.

✅ Semua kolom sudah diisi sebelum berkas diserahkan.

All fields were completed before the file was submitted.

Key Takeaways

Relative clauses and questions preserve the object selected by each lexical -i frame.
Recipient-oriented dikirimi cannot promote its secondary transferred theme; choose dikirimkan for a theme-centered relative.
Agentless di-...-i clauses are complete and central to Indonesian's symmetrical voice ecology.
The productive target schema coexists with lexicalized families and nonalternating roots.
Standard -i, colloquial Jakarta-influenced -in, and corpus frequency must be described by lexical item, genre, and region.

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