A long-distance dependency links a noun or topic to a role inside an embedded clause rather than the nearest clause. Malaysian Malay permits some such relations across selected complements, but local yang patterns do not extend through unlimited layers. Voice, the type of clause boundary, processing load, register, and discourse organization all influence whether a sentence is acceptable and whether a reader can recover the intended role.
Local and embedded gaps form a scale
Begin with a local subject relative. The head laporan is the understood subject of nearby passive disediakan:
Inilah laporan yang disediakan oleh pasukan audit.
This is the report that was prepared by the audit team.
Now insert a belief predicate. Laporan is not an argument of percaya; it is still understood as the patient promoted to subject of embedded telah disediakan.
Inilah laporan yang saya percaya telah disediakan oleh pasukan audit untuk mesyuarat esok.
This is the report that I believe was prepared by the audit team for tomorrow's meeting.
This one-boundary dependency is readily interpretable. Percaya selects a proposition, and passive voice at the embedded site makes laporan the prominent missing participant. A further layer is possible in a sufficiently supportive context, but acceptability and readability decline quickly:
? Inilah laporan yang Farid memberitahu saya bahawa pengurus percaya telah disediakan oleh pasukan audit.
Intended: This is the report that Farid told me the manager believed had been prepared by the audit team. (very difficult to process)
The question mark signals a marginal judgment, not a spelling error. Some speakers can recover the intended chain, especially with deliberate prosody; many readers reject it or must reread it. The overt bahawa, two intervening participants, and two selecting predicates create competing clause boundaries. A professional editor should recast it.
Menurut Farid, pengurus percaya bahawa laporan ini telah disediakan oleh pasukan audit.
According to Farid, the manager believes that this report was prepared by the audit team. (formal)
The recast expresses the same attributed belief without asking one relative dependency to cross every boundary.
Selected complements are the most permissive domain
Predicates such as percaya “believe,” yakin “be confident,” anggap “consider,” and jangka “expect” select propositional content. A head interpreted as the embedded subject can remain accessible when that content follows directly and its role is unambiguous.
Cadangan yang kami yakin akan mendapat sokongan majoriti itu dibentangkan semula hari ini.
The proposal that we are confident will receive majority support was presented again today. (formal)
Kaedah yang kami percaya dapat mengurangkan ralat itu masih perlu diuji.
The method that we believe can reduce errors still needs to be tested. (academic)
Pegawai yang saya sangka akan mengetuai rundingan itu telah ditukarkan ke cawangan lain.
The officer whom I thought would lead the negotiations has been transferred to another branch.
These formal examples are natural because the head is the understood subject of the embedded predicate: cadangan ... mendapat, kaedah ... mengurangkan, pegawai ... mengetuai. No nearer noun phrase competes for that role.
An embedded patient is more demanding. Malay normally marks the remote site with passive voice rather than leaving a gap after an actor-voice meN- verb.
Inilah peruntukan yang kami jangka akan diluluskan oleh kementerian pada suku akhir tahun ini.
This is the allocation that we expect will be approved by the ministry in the final quarter of this year. (formal)
The di- passive visibly promotes peruntukan inside the embedded proposition. An English-shaped version with kementerian akan meluluskan followed by no object is much less acceptable in careful Standard Malay.
Bahawa makes a proposition boundary explicit
Bahawa is valuable when a complete proposition is the content of a report or belief. That very clarity can work against extraction: the reader expects a self-contained clause after bahawa. Compare a full complement with the integrated relative.
Kami percaya bahawa pasukan audit telah menyediakan laporan itu.
We believe that the audit team prepared that report.
Laporan yang kami percaya telah disediakan oleh pasukan audit itu mengandungi tiga cadangan utama.
The report that we believe was prepared by the audit team contains three main recommendations.
The second sentence omits bahawa and uses embedded passive voice. This does not mean that every complementizer must be mechanically deleted. It means that an overt proposition boundary plus a distant gap often competes with the integrated reading. If a writer needs bahawa for attribution or clarity, a complete embedded clause with laporan ini/itu is normally preferable.
See content clauses with bahawa for proposition packaging. The URL retains its legacy spelling, but standard Malaysian text uses bahawa, not Indonesian-associated bahwa.
Reported speech creates another boundary
No syntactic dependency crosses into a direct quotation. Quoted words are presented as their own utterance, with their own pronouns and viewpoint.
Farid berkata, ‘Pasukan audit sudah menyediakan laporan itu.’
Farid said, ‘The audit team has prepared that report.’
Placing a relative head outside and a gap inside the quotation would falsely combine the reporter's syntax with the quoted speaker's words. Convert the report to indirect speech, use menurut, or repeat the noun inside a complete quotation.
Laporan itu, menurut Farid, sudah disediakan oleh pasukan audit.
According to Farid, that report has already been prepared by the audit team. (formal)
Farid mengatakan bahawa pasukan audit sudah menyediakan laporan tersebut.
Farid said that the audit team had already prepared the report. (formal)
Parenthetical menurut Farid attributes the claim without becoming a clause that the dependency must traverse. This is particularly effective in news and administrative prose (formal).
Adjunct clauses and complex noun phrases resist extraction
A selected complement supplies the content required by a predicate. A reason, time, or conditional adjunct merely modifies a complete event. Dependencies out of adjuncts are markedly worse because the listener has already built the main clause around an independent relation.
❌ Laporan yang saya kecewa kerana mereka masih belum menyerahkan terlalu penting untuk ditangguhkan.
Incorrect in careful Standard Malay—the intended object gap is buried inside a reason adjunct.
The natural repair makes laporan itu a detached topic and resumes it inside the complete reason clause:
✅ Laporan itu, saya kecewa kerana mereka masih belum menyerahkannya, sedangkan dokumen tersebut amat penting.
As for that report, I am disappointed that they still have not submitted it, even though the document is very important.
This is an aboutness relation, not an integrated yang relative. Attached -nya fills the embedded object position; the pause after laporan itu announces a discourse topic.
Extraction from inside a complex noun phrase is similarly resistant. In dakwaan bahawa firma itu memalsukan rekod tersebut, the bahawa clause gives the content of the noun dakwaan. Pulling rekod out across both the noun phrase and its content boundary produces a highly unstable dependency. Keep the content complete:
Kami menolak dakwaan bahawa firma itu telah memalsukan rekod tersebut.
We reject the allegation that the firm falsified the record. (formal)
Rekod tersebut menjadi pertikaian utama. Kami menolak dakwaan bahawa firma itu telah memalsukannya.
The record became the main point of dispute. We reject the allegation that the firm falsified it. (formal)
Two sentences often outperform an ingenious relative clause. The second version establishes a topic across discourse and uses -nya inside a complete content clause.
Topic chains can cross where integrated relatives cannot
Malay discourse can establish a topic and keep it active across clauses or sentences. Pronouns, attached -nya, demonstratives, and omission where recoverable maintain the chain.
Laporan itu, saya rasa pihak kementerian belum membacanya. Mereka mungkin baru menerimanya pagi tadi.
As for that report, I don't think the ministry has read it yet. They may only have received it this morning.
The initial laporan itu is not extracted through saya rasa. The clause pihak kementerian belum membacanya is complete, and -nya resumes the topic. A second -nya continues it in the next sentence. This strategy tolerates distance because discourse reference, not a single syntactic gap, carries the connection.
Cadangan baharu itu, ramai yang berpendapat kerajaan patut menelitinya semula sebelum membuat keputusan.
As for the new proposal, many people think the government should reconsider it before making a decision.
The topic-comment version is natural (neutral/formal) when the proposal is already under discussion. It is not interchangeable with a restrictive relative: it identifies an already available topic instead of using a clause to select one proposal from several.
Acceptability depends on processing and discourse
Speakers may disagree about examples near the boundary. Several factors improve a long dependency:
| More accessible | Less accessible |
|---|---|
| one selected complement | several reporting or nominal boundaries |
| head is embedded subject | head is a remote oblique or actor-voice object |
| passive marks a patient role | ordinary meN- verb surrounds a distant gap |
| few competing noun phrases | several plausible controllers intervene |
| supporting context and deliberate prosody | isolated sentence with no established topic |
These are not permission to label every difficult string ungrammatical. A sentence can be structurally interpretable yet editorially poor because readers cannot hold the dependency open. Formal writing should optimize recoverability, not merely test the outer limit of possible judgment.
Common Mistakes
1. Treating local yang as a license for unlimited depth
❌ Inilah fail yang Amir berkata bahawa Nadia mendakwa pihak pejabat percaya sudah hilang.
Unacceptable as careful prose—the chain contains too many competing boundaries and roles.
✅ Menurut Amir, pihak pejabat percaya bahawa fail ini sudah hilang.
According to Amir, the office believes that this file is missing. (formal)
2. Leaving a distant patient after actor voice
❌ Inilah projek yang kami percaya syarikat itu akan menyiapkan tahun depan.
Incorrect in careful Standard Malay—the embedded actor-voice object gap lacks a voice repair.
✅ Inilah projek yang kami percaya akan disiapkan oleh syarikat itu tahun depan.
This is the project that we believe the company will complete next year.
3. Crossing into direct quotation
❌ Laporan yang Farid berkata, ‘Pasukan audit sudah menyediakan,’ akan dibentangkan esok.
Incorrect—the relative dependency cannot enter an independent direct quotation.
✅ Laporan itu, kata Farid, sudah disediakan oleh pasukan audit dan akan dibentangkan esok.
Farid says the report has been prepared by the audit team and will be presented tomorrow.
4. Confusing a resumed topic with an integrated relative
❌ Laporan yang saya rasa mereka belum membacanya terlalu panjang.
Incorrect as an integrated relative—the resumptive object duplicates the relative head.
✅ Laporan itu, saya rasa mereka belum membacanya kerana terlalu panjang.
As for that report, I don't think they have read it because it is too long.
5. Extracting from a reason adjunct
❌ Dokumen yang saya marah kerana dia membuang sukar diganti.
Incorrect—the intended patient gap is inside a reason clause.
✅ Dokumen itu sukar diganti, dan saya marah kerana dia telah membuangnya.
The document is difficult to replace, and I am angry because he threw it away.
Key Takeaways
Malay permits some dependencies across one selected complement, especially when the head is an embedded subject or a patient made prominent by passive voice. Overt bahawa, reported speech, adjuncts, complex noun phrases, competing participants, and additional depth reduce accessibility. Detached topic chains with resumptive -nya can express relations that an integrated yang gap cannot, but the two structures must not be conflated. In advanced prose, processing and discourse constraints matter alongside categorical grammar.
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