Misplacing Passive Agents in Malaysian Malay

English passives encourage learners to build every Malay passive as “patient + passive verb + oleh + actor,” mirroring by the manager. That pattern is grammatical, but it is only one option. In Standard Malaysian Malay, a short third-person agent can follow a di- verb directly, oleh becomes especially useful when other material intervenes or the agent is long, and first- or second-person actors normally require object voice instead.

This is a repair guide to agent placement, not a complete passive paradigm. Its central lesson is slightly counterintuitive: oleh is often omitted precisely when the agent sits immediately beside the passive verb. Adding it everywhere is not safer; the actor’s person, position, weight, and discourse importance decide the natural construction.

Three dependable patterns

All three put the patient first. They differ in how the actor is integrated into the clause. The first two are di- passives; the third is object voice. English obscures this distinction because it can translate every example with an active sentence or a by phrase.

An adjacent third-person agent can be bare

After a di- verb, a short third-person actor may immediately follow without oleh. This compact pattern is standard, not an abbreviation that belongs only to casual speech.

The relationship is recoverable because jawatankuasa and jiran saya directly follow the passive verbs ditolak and diterima. The verb morphology identifies the patient-first construction, while adjacency identifies the following noun phrase as its actor.

This is why an English speaker should not automatically insert oleh merely because the translation contains by. Permohonan itu ditolak oleh jawatankuasa is also grammatical, but the preposition is optional in this short adjacent configuration. Keeping oleh may make the actor more explicit or slightly weightier; omitting it produces a compact neutral clause.

Use oleh when the agent is displaced or structurally heavy

Once an adverbial separates the verb from the actor, oleh clearly marks where the agent phrase begins. Compare the adjacent and displaced forms:

In the second sentence, dengan teliti intervenes between the verb and actor. Dropping oleh there would force the reader to reinterpret pegawai bertugas after an already complete adverbial. Careful Malaysian prose therefore uses oleh to re-establish the agent relation.

Oleh is also natural with a long, coordinated, or institutionally important actor, especially in (formal) writing:

Here the preposition gives the reader a clear boundary before a heavy phrase. This is a processing advantage, not a word-for-word copy of English.

Omit the actor when it does not matter

A passive does not need an expressed agent. Procedures, notices, and reports often suppress it because the result matters more than who performed the action.

Adding oleh pihak berkenaan “by the relevant party” to such clauses often contributes nothing. English administrative prose also overuses vague by phrases; copying them can make Malay heavier without making it more informative. Express the actor only when identification, responsibility, contrast, or accountability matters.

Pronoun actors normally move before the bare verb

With first- and second-person actors, Standard Malay normally uses object voice rather than a di- passive. The actor pronoun comes directly before a verb without meN-:

The verb can retain a derivational suffix: tandatangani keeps -i, and bincangkan keeps -kan. What object voice excludes is the actor-voice meN- prefix. Forms such as Surat itu ditandatangani oleh saya can occur when “by me” is deliberately contrastive, and oleh saya is also found in (formal) or translated prose. It is not the neutral default for simply reporting what I did.

Third-person pronouns behave differently in careful Standard Malay: Surat itu ditandatangani olehnya “The letter was signed by him/her” is (formal), while a noun actor can follow directly. Patient-first patterns such as Surat itu dia tandatangan are widespread (informal) and vary by speaker and region; learners should not use them as the default edited form.

Keep agent phrases in their construction

The two voices cannot be combined by moving an actor freely around the verb:

English topicalization can move an object while leaving the active verb intact: “This report, I checked yesterday.” Malay object voice is more grammaticalized. Moving the patient changes the actor–verb pattern as well. See the object-voice error guide for that particular repair.

Common Mistakes

1. Omitting oleh after an intervening adverbial

2. Putting a noun agent before a di- verb

3. Forcing a first-person actor into an oleh phrase

Putting oleh before saya does not create a passive agent phrase: the preposition belongs after a di- verb. A genuinely contrastive dibalas oleh saya, bukan oleh Farid is possible, but neutral first-person reporting uses object voice.

4. Keeping meN- after a preverbal pronoun actor

Key Takeaways

• A short third-person agent may immediately follow a di- verb without oleh.
• Keep oleh when an adverbial separates verb and agent, and normally with long or formally prominent agents.
• Omit an irrelevant agent instead of adding a vague translated by phrase.
• Put first- and second-person pronoun actors before a bare verb in object voice: surat itu saya tulis.
• Agent placement is part of the voice construction; it is not free word order.