The di- passive is not a marginal imitation of English passive syntax. It is a central member of Malaysian Malay's voice ecology, interacting with pivot-sensitive relativization, agent form, information structure, and genre. Advanced control requires knowing where the construction is productive, where a voice alternation is necessary, and where a familiar-looking derivative has become lexicalized.
This page concentrates on relative clauses, extraction limits, register alternation, lexical exceptions, and agentless use. The relative-clause overview provides the wider yang system; the other pages in this series cover basic formation, arguments, construction choice, and preverbal markers.
A symmetrical voice perspective
Many descriptions call di- simply “passive,” and that label remains useful. Typologically, however, Malay is often analyzed as having a symmetrical or discourse-driven voice system: actor voice, di- passive, and object voice offer competing ways to select a privileged participant without all the demotions and special morphology familiar from European passives.
Rina membaca buku itu.
Rina reads that book. (actor voice)
Buku itu dibaca Rina.
That book is read by Rina. (di- passive)
Buku itu saya baca.
I read that book. (object voice)
Calling the second clause nonstandard because its agent lacks English by is incorrect. A bare postverbal third-person agent is established Malay syntax. Oleh is available but not obligatory in all such clauses.
Relative clauses: voice reveals the pivot
Malay yang relatives strongly favor a gap corresponding to the embedded clause's subject or pivot. To relativize an affected participant, select passive voice inside the relative clause.
Buku yang dibaca Rina itu sudah dikembalikan ke rak.
The book that Rina read has been returned to the shelf.
The head buku corresponds to the missing passive subject of dibaca Rina. To relativize the actor instead, change to actor voice:
Rina, yang membaca buku itu semalam, bekerja di perpustakaan.
Rina, who read that book yesterday, works at the library.
❌ Rina yang buku itu dibaca semalam bekerja di perpustakaan.
Incorrect agent extraction—the passive clause has selected buku itu, not Rina, as its pivot.
✅ Rina yang membaca buku itu semalam bekerja di perpustakaan.
Rina, who read that book yesterday, works at the library.
This alternation is stronger evidence than English word order. The voice form inside the relative clause licenses which participant can be absent and identified with the head.
Relative agents and oleh
An oleh phrase remains an oblique agent phrase; simply deleting oleh does not turn it into the relativized pivot. To make the actor the head, actor voice is the reliable standard strategy.
Surat yang ditulis oleh Ali itu dihantar semalam.
The letter that was written by Ali was sent yesterday.
Ali ialah pegawai yang menulis surat itu.
Ali is the officer who wrote that letter.
English permits “the officer by whom the letter was written.” Malay normally avoids reproducing that preposition-fronting architecture and changes voice instead.
Extraction limits and resumptive strategies
Malay does not freely extract every noun phrase from every position. An oblique location, possessor, or complement may require a resumptive element or a different clause design.
Inilah meja yang buku itu diletakkan di atasnya.
This is the table on which the book was placed. (careful)
The locative relation is retained in di atasnya. A more natural alternative in many contexts is to make the table the locative topic without forcing a literal English relative: Buku itu diletakkan di atas meja ini.
Long and heavily embedded relatives quickly become difficult to process even when their intended roles can be recovered. Malaysian formal prose often improves clarity by splitting the sentence, repeating a noun, or selecting a new voice at the embedded boundary. There is no virtue in preserving English extraction depth.
Agent placement and adjacency
A short bare nominal agent normally follows the passive verb closely:
Kertas itu diperiksa penyelia sebelum diterbitkan.
The paper was checked by the supervisor before publication.
When intervening material is long, oleh clearly marks the delayed agent.
Kertas itu diperiksa dengan teliti oleh penyelia yang dilantik oleh fakulti.
The paper was carefully checked by the supervisor appointed by the faculty. (formal)
Without oleh, placing a long manner phrase between verb and agent can become hard to parse. This is a processing and structure constraint, not merely a punctuation preference.
Attached -nya can encode a third-person agent in compact formal or literary prose:
Surat itu ditulisnya pada malam terakhir sebelum berangkat.
He/She wrote that letter on the final night before departing. (literary)
This is not equivalent to first-person object voice. Ditulisnya contains passive di- plus an attached third-person clitic; surat itu saya tulis uses a preverbal actor pronoun and a bare verb.
Agentless di-: more than bureaucratic evasion
Agentless passives are common when the actor is generic, unknown, institutionally recoverable, narratively withheld, or irrelevant.
Kuncinya diambil antara pukul dua dengan pukul tiga pagi.
The key was taken between two and three in the morning.
Permohonan hendaklah dihantar sebelum tarikh tutup.
Applications must be submitted before the closing date. (formal)
The first can create a mystery by withholding the thief. The second addresses a generic applicant while centering the required document. Neither usage is intrinsically dishonest. If responsibility matters, add it explicitly:
Keputusan itu dibuat oleh jawatankuasa perolehan, bukan oleh seorang pegawai sahaja.
That decision was made by the procurement committee, not by a single officer. (formal)
Critical reading should ask why an agent is absent, but grammar alone does not supply the speaker's motive.
Lexical and valency constraints
Only a verb with an appropriate affected argument can form an ordinary di- passive. Intransitive tidur “sleep” cannot yield ordinary ditidur. Adding causative morphology changes valency: Kanak-kanak itu ditidurkan oleh ibunya means “The child was put to sleep by her mother.”
❌ Dia ditidur selama lapan jam.
Incorrect ordinary passive—tidur has no affected object to promote.
✅ Kanak-kanak itu ditidurkan oleh ibunya selepas makan malam.
The child was put to sleep by her mother after dinner.
Some passive-looking forms have frequent lexicalized readings. Dikenali sebagai means “be known as,” dilahirkan means “be born,” dianggap means “be considered,” and dipercayai in news reports can mean “is believed.” Their current collocations must be learned; merely reversing an English active clause will not predict them.
Bandar itu dikenali sebagai pusat penghasilan batik.
The town is known as a center of batik production.
Suspek dipercayai telah meninggalkan negeri itu.
The suspect is believed to have left the state. (news)
The second has an evidential/reporting function: it attributes an assessment without naming its source in that clause. It is not simply the concrete action “believe the suspect.”
Formal paragraph with annotation
Cadangan tersebut telah diteliti oleh jawatankuasa teknikal. Beberapa pindaan dicadangkan bagi mengurangkan kos pelaksanaan. Keputusan akhir akan diumumkan selepas mesyuarat bulan hadapan.
The proposal has been examined by the technical committee. Several amendments were proposed to reduce implementation costs. The final decision will be announced after next month's meeting. (formal)
The paragraph maintains a chain of affected institutional topics:
- cadangan tersebut is identifiable and followed by an explicit expert agent;
- beberapa pindaan is introduced through an agentless passive because the proposers are recoverable or secondary;
- keputusan akhir carries akan before attached diumumkan, projecting the administrative sequence forward.
An all-active version would force the committee or an unnamed institution to remain subject and would change what the paragraph foregrounds.
Colloquial exchange with annotation
A: Kunci kereta tu mana? B: Dah diambil Farid tadi. A: Kenapa tak diletak balik di atas meja?
A: Where's that car key? B: Farid took it earlier. A: Why wasn't it put back on the table? (informal)
Colloquial tu, dah, and tak coexist with intact passive forms diambil and diletak. Informality does not require removing di-. A more careful version would use itu, sudah, tidak, and possibly diletakkan semula, but the voice choice remains available in both registers.
This distribution is corpus-realistic: di- is particularly dense in news, instructions, reports, recipes, and narratives that track affected entities, yet it also appears naturally in daily conversation. It is neither “formal only” nor equally frequent in every discourse.
Common Mistakes
1. Relativizing the agent while retaining patient-selected passive voice
❌ Ali ialah orang yang surat itu ditulis semalam.
Incorrect pivot for the intended agent relative.
✅ Ali ialah orang yang menulis surat itu semalam.
Ali is the person who wrote that letter yesterday.
2. Requiring oleh before every full-noun agent
❌ Buku itu dibaca oleh Rina ialah satu-satunya susunan yang gramatis.
Incorrect rule—a short bare postverbal agent is also standard.
✅ Buku itu dibaca Rina sebelum kelas bermula.
That book was read by Rina before class began.
3. Passivizing an intransitive root without changing valency
❌ Bayi itu ditidur selepas minum susu.
Incorrect—ordinary tidur lacks an affected object.
✅ Bayi itu ditidurkan selepas minum susu.
The baby was put to sleep after drinking milk.
4. Calling conversational di- nonstandard
❌ Kuncinya diambil Farid tidak gramatis kerana ayat itu tidak formal.
Incorrect claim—di- passive occurs in both conversation and formal prose.
✅ Kuncinya diambil Farid tadi.
Farid took the key earlier. (conversation)
5. Separating the voice prefix because a locative follows
❌ Surat itu di tulis di pejabat.
Incorrect spelling—only the locative di is separate.
✅ Surat itu ditulis di pejabat daerah.
That letter was written at the district office.
Key Takeaways
The di- passive participates in a symmetrical voice ecology and remains productive across registers. Passive voice licenses affected-pivot relatives; actor relatives normally require actor voice. Bare agents favor adjacency, while oleh supports explicit or heavier agents. Agentless clauses serve multiple discourse purposes, and lexical valency limits what can be passivized. Colloquial particles may surround an intact di- form, so register and voice must not be conflated.
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- di- Passive: Overview and Formation in Malaysian MalayA1 — Form the Malaysian Malay di- passive by placing the affected subject first, attaching di- to the verb, and optionally adding a third-person agent.
- di- Passive: Subjects, Objects, and Argument Order in Malaysian MalayA2 — Identify the patient subject, optional agent, pronoun patterns, and argument alternations licensed by the Malaysian Malay di- passive.
- di- Passive: Choosing This Construction in Malaysian MalayA2 — Choose the di- passive when an affected, usually identifiable participant—not its actor—is the clause's discourse center.
- di- Passive: Aspect, Modality, and Negation in Malaysian MalayC1 — Build temporal, modal, and negative meanings by placing preverbal particles before an unchanged di- passive verb.
- Object Voice with a Bare Verb: Advanced Constraints and Register in Malaysian MalayC1 — Handle pivot-sensitive relatives, agent restrictions, ellipsis, lexical stems, and formal-colloquial alternation in Malaysian object voice.
- Relative Clauses with yang in Malaysian MalayA2 — Build noun modifiers with yang, identify the unspoken role inside them, and choose an appropriate voice for subject and object relatives.