Advanced control of -i applicatives requires more than recognizing a suffix. The selected target determines which participant can become the passive pivot, head a standard relative clause, or remain understood in an agentless use. At the same time, individual lexical families vary sharply in frequency and register: mengisi borang is ordinary everywhere, while mendatangi rumah and menghadiahi Rina sebuah buku are especially at home in formal reporting, and menandai halaman competes with simpler analytic expressions.
This page treats relative clauses, extraction limits, agentless uses, lexical exceptions, corpus-realistic frequency, and formal-colloquial alternation. It does not repeat the other four pages' basic formation, argument inventory, discourse-choice guide, or particle-order system. The general object-relative constraint is developed in the object-relative guide.
Subject relatives preserve actor voice
An actor subject can head a yang relative while the meN- applicative remains active. No subject pronoun is repeated inside the relative clause.
Pegawai yang mengisi borang itu sedang menunggu di luar bilik mesyuarat.
The officer who filled in the form is waiting outside the meeting room.
Wartawan yang mendatangi rumah tersebut sudah mendapatkan pengesahan daripada keluarga.
The journalist who visited the house has obtained confirmation from the family. (formal/reporting)
Kelab yang menghadiahi Rina sebuah buku turut membiayai program bacaan itu.
The club that presented Rina with a book also funded the reading programme.
Penyunting yang menandai halaman terakhir itu akan menyemak versi baharu.
The editor who marked the final page will review the new version.
The structure is pegawai [yang _ mengisi borang]. Because the gap is the actor subject, actor morphology is expected. Repeating dia—pegawai yang dia mengisi borang—does not form the neutral standard subject relative intended here.
Target relatives require patient-centered voice
When the head noun is the selected -i target, standard Malay normally makes that target the passive or object-voice pivot.
Borang yang diisi pegawai itu mempunyai satu ruangan tambahan.
The form that the officer filled in has one additional field.
Rumah yang didatangi pasukan pemeriksa itu terletak di seberang sungai.
The house visited by the inspection team stands across the river. (formal)
Rina, yang dihadiahi sebuah buku oleh pihak sekolah, kini mengurus sudut bacaan.
Rina, who was presented with a book by the school, now manages the reading corner.
Halaman yang ditandai penyunting perlu dicetak semula.
The page marked by the editor needs to be reprinted.
The head noun corresponds to the gap before yang: borang [yang _ diisi pegawai]. Keeping actor voice with an overt actor—borang yang pegawai mengisi—violates the neutral standard pivot strategy. This is not evidence that Malay cannot relativize objects; it shows that Malay uses voice to make the relativized participant the pivot.
First- and second-person agents inside target relatives
With saya, kami, kita, awak, or anda, the target relative uses object voice rather than a neutral di- passive.
Borang yang saya isi semalam masih berada di atas meja penyelia.
The form that I filled in yesterday is still on the supervisor's desk.
Rumah yang kami datangi selepas banjir itu sudah dibaiki.
The house that we visited after the flood has been repaired.
Halaman yang anda tandai akan dimasukkan ke dalam lampiran akhir.
The pages that you mark will be included in the final appendix. (formal)
The pronoun immediately precedes the bare suffixed form: saya isi, kami datangi, anda tandai. Active meN- is absent, but the actual derivative remains solid. This object-voice alternation is standard syntax, not an informal deletion.
Extraction stops at the selected target
The selected target has privileged pivot access; another participant cannot automatically be extracted through the same verb form. Menghadiahi makes the recipient its first object, while the gift is the following theme. Therefore a theme-headed relative normally changes to menghadiahkan.
❌ Inilah buku yang pihak sekolah menghadiahi Rina semalam.
Incorrect standard extraction—the gift is not the selected pivot of menghadiahi.
✅ Inilah buku yang dihadiahkan oleh pihak sekolah kepada Rina semalam.
This is the book that the school presented to Rina yesterday.
The corrected form changes valency as well as voice: menghadiahkan buku kepada Rina selects the theme, so buku can become yang dihadiahkan ... kepada Rina. If Rina is the head, retain recipient-oriented dihadiahi:
Inilah Rina, pelajar yang dihadiahi sebuah buku oleh pihak sekolah semalam.
This is Rina, the student whom the school presented with a book yesterday.
Oblique material also remains oblique. A mark introduced with dengan in menandai halaman dengan pelekat cannot be treated as though menandai selected that sticker as its target. Rephrase if the sticker itself must be the head topic.
Agentless uses are genuine passives
An -i target may be foregrounded while its actor is unknown, generic, obvious, or deliberately suppressed.
Borang ini mesti diisi sebelum nombor giliran diberikan.
This form must be filled in before a queue number is issued. (formal instruction)
Rumah kosong itu sering didatangi selepas tengah malam.
That vacant house is often visited after midnight.
Rina dihadiahi sebuah buku sempena kejayaannya dalam pertandingan tersebut.
Rina was presented with a book for her success in the competition.
Halaman yang mengandungi data peribadi telah ditandai untuk dipadam.
Pages containing personal data have been marked for deletion. (formal)
The missing agent does not make these intransitive or nonstandard. The target remains a syntactic passive subject, and the event still conceptually involves an actor. English often also allows an agentless passive, but Malay need not reproduce English be + participle morphology to qualify as passive.
Do not call Rumah itu didatangi ungrammatical merely because English the house was come to sounds archaic. Malay didatangi is licensed by Malay valency, not English passive preferences.
Lexical families impose their own constraints
The target-oriented schema is productive, but each family restricts meaning and complements.
Mengisi
Isi already ends in i. Ordinary mengisi is formed with meN- from that whole root; it does not contain a second, invisible -i suffix. Mengisi borang, mengisi tangki dengan air, and mengisi jawatan kosong are frequent, lexicalized frames whose container-object alignment makes them useful comparisons in this series. Do not write an artificial mengisii.
Calon dalaman yang mengisi jawatan itu mempunyai pengalaman lebih daripada sepuluh tahun.
The internal candidate who filled the position has more than ten years of experience. (formal)
Mendatangi
Mendatangi can mean deliberately visit or approach a place/person; in passive clauses, feelings, difficulties, or visitors can “come upon” an experiencer. This extension is lexical, not a universal meaning of -i.
Selepas membaca surat itu, dia didatangi rasa bimbang yang sukar dijelaskan.
After reading the letter, she was overcome by a hard-to-explain feeling of anxiety. (literary/formal)
Menghadiahi
Menghadiahi requires the recipient-first frame when both recipient and gift are expressed. It competes with more common theme-oriented menghadiahkan sesuatu kepada seseorang and everyday memberi.
Menandai
Menandai selects what receives or bears a mark. For “indicate; signify,” Malaysian formal prose commonly uses menandakan. The suffix contrast cannot be reduced to an English spelling difference.
Warna merah pada carta itu menandakan risiko tinggi, manakala penyunting menandai catatan yang perlu disahkan.
Red on the chart indicates high risk, while the editor marks the notes requiring verification. (formal)
Corpus-realistic frequency and register
The four model families are not equally frequent in every genre:
| Form | Typical Malaysian distribution | Frequent alternative |
|---|---|---|
| mengisi borang | very common; neutral/formal | isi borang in commands and conversation |
| mendatangi rumah/premis | formal reporting, inspections, deliberate visits | datang/pergi ke rumah in conversation |
| menghadiahi Rina buku | careful presentation or award language | memberi Rina buku; menghadiahkan buku kepada Rina |
| menandai halaman | editorial, administrative, technical description | tanda halaman; letak tanda pada halaman |
A dictionary-listed derivative may be fully standard yet less frequent than its analytic alternative. Conversely, colloquial root forms are not permission to remove meN- from arbitrary actor-first formal clauses. Register alternation often changes the entire construction.
Annotated formal paragraph
Selepas mengisi borang pemeriksaan, dua orang pegawai mendatangi rumah Rina; Rina kemudiannya dihadiahi sebuah buku panduan, dan halaman yang menerangkan prosedur kecemasan ditandai dengan pelekat merah.
After filling in the inspection form, two officers visited Rina's house; Rina was then presented with a guidebook, and the pages explaining emergency procedures were marked with red stickers. (formal report)
The paragraph is formally cohesive:
- mengisi borang pemeriksaan treats the form as a container for recorded information;
- mendatangi rumah Rina packages the official destination as an object;
- passive Rina ... dihadiahi shifts the continuing topic to the animate recipient;
- halaman ... ditandai makes selected pages the passive pivot of a relative-clause-containing phrase;
- kemudiannya and the semicolon organize discourse, while all voice morphology stays attached.
Colloquial exchange
“Borang dah isi?” “Dah. Tadi kami pergi rumah Rina, bagi dia buku panduan, lepas tu tanda halaman penting dengan pelekat merah.”
‘Filled in the form?’ ‘Yes. Earlier we went to Rina's house, gave her a guidebook, then marked the important pages with red stickers.’ (informal Malaysian dialogue)
The dialogue uses understood arguments, dah, colloquial zero/optional ke after pergi, bare bagi, lepas tu, and bare tanda. Its formal counterpart does not arise by simply adding prefixes word by word: pergi rumah becomes mendatangi rumah only when the deliberate target-oriented construal fits; bagi dia buku can become recipient-oriented menghadiahi Rina sebuah buku only if the transfer really is a gift.
Common Mistakes
1. Retaining actor voice in a target relative
❌ Borang yang pegawai mengisi itu belum ditandatangani.
Incorrect neutral standard object extraction—make borang the passive pivot.
✅ Borang yang diisi pegawai itu belum ditandatangani oleh pemohon.
The form filled in by the officer has not yet been signed by the applicant.
2. Extracting the gift through recipient-oriented menghadiahi
❌ Buku yang kelab menghadiahi Rina itu sangat mahal.
Incorrect pivot mapping—the gift is the secondary theme of menghadiahi.
✅ Buku yang dihadiahkan oleh kelab kepada Rina itu sangat mahal.
The book that the club presented to Rina is very expensive.
3. Calling an agentless -i passive nonstandard
❌ Rumah itu didatangi tidak gramatis kerana pelakunya tidak disebut.
Incorrect claim—Malay freely omits a recoverable or irrelevant passive agent.
✅ Rumah itu sering didatangi pada hujung minggu oleh peminat sejarah.
The house is often visited on weekends by history enthusiasts.
4. Extending a lexical meaning to every family
❌ Semua kata kerja berakhiran -i membawa makna berulang kali.
Incorrect—repetition belongs only to selected lexical families and contexts.
✅ Penyunting menandai satu halaman sahaja dalam salinan tersebut.
The editor marked only one page in that copy.
5. Treating formal and colloquial versions as word-for-word variants
⚠️ Dalam laporan rasmi, pegawai pergi rumah itu dan bagi Rina buku.
Register mismatch and colloquial argument marking in a formal report.
✅ Dalam laporan rasmi, pegawai mendatangi rumah itu dan menghadiahi Rina sebuah buku.
In the formal report, the officer visited the house and presented Rina with a book. (formal)
Key Takeaways
Actor heads retain meN- in subject relatives; selected target heads normally require di- passive or pronoun-agent object voice. Extraction cannot skip the selected recipient of menghadiahi to target its secondary gift; change to a theme-oriented verb. Agentless -i passives are fully Malaysian, while lexical families constrain meaning, productivity, and frequency. Formal and colloquial alternatives often repackage the whole event rather than merely adding or deleting an affix.
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- -i Applicative Patterns: Overview and Formation in Malaysian MalayB2 — Understand how -i promotes a location, recipient, or affected target to direct-object status and why its meaning remains lexically constrained.
- -i Applicative Patterns: Subjects, Objects, and Argument Order in Malaysian MalayB2 — Identify actors, target objects, secondary participants, passive subjects, and pronoun order in Malaysian Malay -i applicative clauses.
- -i Applicative Patterns: Choosing This Construction in Malaysian MalayB2 — Choose an -i applicative when discourse centers a container, goal, recipient, or marked target, then select actor, passive, or object voice by topicality.
- -i Applicative Patterns: Aspect, Modality, and Negation in Malaysian MalayC1 — Place aspect, modal, and negative particles before an unchanged Malaysian Malay -i applicative while preserving voice morphology and scope.
- Object Relatives and Voice Switching in Malaysian MalayB2 — Relativize a patient by choosing object voice with a pronominal actor or a di- passive with a third-person actor.
- Everyday Colloquial Malaysian MalayB1 — Understand coherent everyday Malay through reductions, root verbs, pronouns, ellipsis, and particles in a clearly defined Malaysian social setting.