Voice in Colloquial Malay Relatives*

Hiroki Nomoto
(Graduate School, National University of Singapore/Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
)

1.

Introduction

Voice has long been one of the most popular issues among Malay/Indonesian linguists in the world.
This is because the voice system of Malay/Indonesian, like those of many other Austronesian
languages, is not a simple bipolar opposition between the active and the passive. Unlike other
Austronesian languages such as Tagalog and Malagasy, the fact is not so obvious in
Malay/Indonesian that it has been described as a simple active-passive opposition from time to
time.
As a result of the recent trend of emphasising sociolinguistic factors in Malay/Indonesian
linguistics, combined with strong descriptivism, considerable attention began to be paid to
colloquial and regional varieties of the language as well as written and standard varieties. Cole et al.
(2006) is one of the studies done in such a spirit. They studied Jakarta Indonesian, the colloquial
variety of Indonesian which is normally spoken by the population of Jakarta in the course of their
daily lives (Wouk 1989), and found a different voice system from that of Standard Indonesian.
Specifically, they concluded that a type of passive called Passive 2 (P2) in the literature on
Standard Indonesian does not exist in Jakarta Indonesian.
The present study is modelled after Cole et al. (2006) and discusses the voice system of
Colloquial Malay, which is the colloquial variety of the Malay language spoken in Malaysia1.
Although both simple clauses and relative clauses are examined in Cole et al. (2006), the present
study only deals with the latter. I will examine which voice is employed in the relative clauses
found in a corpus of Colloquial Malay and conclude that P2 (or bare passive in the term used in
section 2 and the sections thereafter) does not exist in Colloquial Malay either.
*

I would like to thank Isamu Shoho, Osamu Hieda and Untung Yuwono for their helpful comments. Thanks also go to
Saiful Bahari bin Ahmad and Nadiah Hanim for their assistance as my informants. I am grateful to Terence Seah for
checking my English.
The following abbreviations are used in this paper. A: adjective; ADV: adverb; Ag: agent; AUX: auxiliary; COMP :
complementiser; e: empty; FUT: future; INT: interjection; N: noun; NEG: negation; Op: null operator; P: preposition; PART:
particle; PERF: perfect; PROG: progressive; t: trace; V: verb; Vi: intransitive verb; XP: maximal projection of X.
1
For a more detailed description of Colloquial Malay, see Nomoto (2006b, section 2.1). But one point must be noted here.
That is, the opposition of Colloquial Malay versus Written Malay is based on the degree of formality, with the former being
less formal than the latter. The names indicate the type of communication in which they are primarily used. Alternatively,
they can be called Informal/Low Malay and Formal/High Malay, respectively.



The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 is a brief introduction to the
voice system of Malay/Indonesian. Section 3 explains the methodology of the study. The results are
shown and analysed in section 4. Section 5 is the conclusion.

2.

Malay/Indonesian voice system

Voskuil (2000) classifies Indonesian voice into four categories: morphological active,
morphological passive, bare active and bare passive. The situation is the same in Malay.
(1)

a.

Morphological active
Dia sudah mem-baca buku itu.
she PERF MEN-read book that
She has already read the book.

b.

Morphological passive
Buku itu di-baca (oleh)-nya.
book that DI-read (by)-her
The book is read by her.

c.

Bare active
Dia sudah baca buku itu.
she PERF read book that
She has read the book.

d.

Bare passive
Buku itu sudah dia baca.
book that PERF she read
She has already read the book.

Morphological active and passive are characterised by the prefixes meN- and di-, respectively. Bare
active

and

passive

are

different

in

word

order,

specifically

that

of

agent

and

auxiliary/negation/adverb. The agent precedes auxiliary/negation/adverb in the former, while in the

latter no element can intervene between the agent and the verb stem. The position of the theme
argument is not relevant in distinguishing passive from active since it can also appear after the verb.
Thus, (1b) and (1d) allow the following variants, respectively: dibacanya buku itu and sudah dia
baca buku itu.
A variety of terminologies are used in the literature to refer to one or more of the four voices
shown above. Table 1 (p. 97) summarises some of them. In Table 1, two alternative names shown in
italics, namely bentuk persona/ninshoukei [personal form] and object preposing, appear twice,
which means that these two categories subsume two voices which are treated as distinct in the
present study and others.



Let us look at the latter first. Chung (1976b) claims that the following two sentences, which are
a bare active (2a) and a bare passive sentence (2b) in the terminology of the present study, represent
the same one construction Object Preposing.
Table 1.

Variety of terminologies for Malay/Indonesian voices

Present paper

Pattern

Alternative names

morphological

Ag meN-V

aktif jati2 [genuine active] (Asmah 1980)

di-V (oleh) Ag

passive type 1 (P1) (Dardjowidjojo 1978 among others),

active
morphological
passive

pasif jati [genuine passive] (Asmah 1980), di- passive

(Yeoh

1979),

canonical

passive

(Chung

1976b;

Guilfoyle et al. 1992); bentuk persona/ninshoukei

[personal form] (Shoho 1998)
bare active

Ag AUX/NEG/ADV V

aktif semu [superficial active] (Asmah 1980), stem

sentences (Chung 1978); object preposing (Chung
1976a, b, 1978)

bare passive

AUX/NEG/ADV Ag V

passive type 2 (P2) (Dardjowidjojo 1978 among others),

pasif semu [superficial passive] (Asmah 1980 among
others), pronoun passive (Nik Safiah 1975), 1st and 2nd
person passive (Yeoh 1979), de-voiced transitive
(Cartier 1979), ergative (Cartier 1979), subjective
passive (Guilfoyle et al. 1992); object preposing (Chung
1976a, b. 1978), bentuk persona/ninshoukei [personal
form] (Shoho 1998)

(2)

a.

Orang lelaki itu saya akan bunuh.

man

male the I

FUT kill

Im going to kill that man./That man, Im going to kill.

b.

Mobil itu dapat kita perbaiki.

car

the can

we repair.

We can repair the car./The car, we can repair.

(Chung 1976b: (3c) and (4))
In (2a) the agent saya I precedes the auxiliary akan will, hence it is a bare active sentence. In
(2b) the order of the relevant two elements is the reverse. The auxiliary dapat can precedes the
agent kita we, hence it is a bare passive sentence. These two sentences both involve the
2
To be precise, the original definition of aktif jati by Asmah is as follows: (i) the verb contains the prefix meN- and (ii) if
transitive, the object can be passivised using the verb prefixed by di-. See Asmah (1980: 88-89, 349).



movement of the underlying postverbal direct object to the beginning of the clause. With regard to
the difference in word order between the two, Chung posits an optional cliticisation of the
underlying subject (i.e. the agent) to the verb. Thus, in (2b), kita we is analysed to be cliticised to
the verb perbaiki to repair.
In my understanding, bentuk persona/ninshoukei [personal form] is virtually the same as the
passive in prescriptive grammars such as Tatabahasa Dewan (Nik Safiah et al. 1993). The alleged
evidence for the category is that the distribution of bare passive and morphological passive is
complementary. Bare passive is used for first and second person agents and morphological passive
for third person agents. The proponents of bentuk persona (and prescriptive passive) often invoke
the synchronic resemblance between the prefix di- and the third person singular pronoun dia, which
in turn appears to verify their hypothesis that the two are diachronically the same one thing. The
issue of the historical origin of the prefix di- set aside, however, synchronically there are several
syntactic and semantic differences between morphological and bare passive. For example, only the
agent of bare passive, but not that of morphological passive, can serve as the controller (3) and a
binder of the reflexive sendiri self (4).
(3)

a.

*Kereta itu di-larikan oleh Alii untuk ei mencuba-nya.

car

the DI-drive

by

Ali for

test-it

The car was driven by Ali so he could test it.

b.

Kereta itu sayai larikan untuk ei mencuba-nya.

car

the I

drive

for

test-it

The car, I drove so I could test it.

(Alsagoff 1992: 63)
(4)

a.

Doktor itui di-usik oleh Alij di rumah sendirii/*j.

doctor the DI-tease by

Ali in house self

The doctori was teased by Alij in selfsi/*j house.

b.

Doktor ituj Alii usik di rumah sendirii/j.

doctor the Ali tease in house self
Alii teased the doctorj in selfsi/j house.
(Alsagoff 1992: 76)

What is more, the alleged complementary distribution is actually no more than an ideal. Bare
passive is not restricted to first and second person agents. Morphological passive is mostly used for
third person agents, but it can also be used for first and second person agents as long as certain
semantic/pragmatic conditions are met. These facts have been repeatedly pointed out for as long as
some forty years (Abdul Hamid 1992: 10-12). Surprisingly, according to Shibata (1992), the
equivalent of di-tulis saya written by me dates back to as early as A.D. 686 in Kota Kapur
Inscription as ni-galar-ku (di-, ni-: passive marker; tulis, galar: to write; saya, -ku: me/my). The



present study will provide further evidence against the category bentuk persona and prescriptive
passive.
To sum up, there are four categories of voice in Malay. However, two points must be noted here.
Firstly, the classification is based on the data of Written Malay and it is not necessarily the case that
the same classification is true with Colloquial Malay. Recall the claim by Cole et al. (2006) that
Jakarta Indonesian, the colloquial variety of Indonesian, lacks bare passive, which is a very
productive pattern in Standard Written Indonesian. Secondly, in actual language use, it is often the
case that one pattern is more favoured than the other(s). In other words, the frequency of one
pattern may differ from those of the others to a significant extent. Now, the problems are: (i) which
of the four voices shown above are possible at all in Colloquial Malay? and (ii) what is the
frequency of each possible voice? This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining the
relative clauses found in a corpus of Colloquial Malay.

3.

Methodology

3.1

Corpus

The corpus used in the present study is a corpus built by a research project at Tokyo University of
Foreign Studies (21st Century Centre of Excellence Programme: Usage-Based Linguistic
Informatics), which I participated in. The official name of this corpus is Multilingual Corpora
(Malay), though I have used a simpler name UKM Corpus in my past works (Nomoto 2006a, b).
The corpus was made in cooperation with Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). It consists of
32 sessions of casual conversation between two university students each time. 20 students are
involved. The total recording time is approximately 30.5 hours. 22 of the 32 dialogues have been
transcribed. The total word count is 172,855 words, including a small number of recurrent tags.
Visit the following website for more information about the corpus:
http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/multilingual_corpus/ms/ (accessed 15/09/2006).
The data in the following sections are all from this corpus unless otherwise indicated.
3.2

Design of the examination

This section explains how the examination into the above-mentioned corpus was made.
I searched the corpus for the relative clauses with the complementiser yang plus gap in which
either the external or internal argument (i.e. underlying subject and object, respectively) of a
transitive verb is relativised. In what follows, I call the relativisation of the external and internal
argument subject relativisation and object relativisation, respectively, for ease of exposition.
There were about 2,500 instances of yang in total. However, more than 2,000 instances of them
did not satisfy the present purpose and hence are excluded from the object of examination. They
include embedded complement clauses introduced by yang (5), relative clauses whose main



predicate is not a transitive verb (6), relative clauses with no gap (7) and the expression yang
-nya, which I consider to be an idiom meaning what is or to ones (8).
(5)

Dia tak nak hidup sebab

he not want live

dia tau

[yang

dia akan buta].

because he know COMP he will blind

He didnt want to live because he knew that he would lose his sight.
(6)

a.

Bukan kucing yang [NP binatang] tu, nama-nya memang Kuching.3

not

cat

COMP

animal

that name-its indeed

Kuching

Its not the animal, kucing (cat), but its name is indeed Kuching. (Kuching, is the
capital city of Sarawak)
b.

kesan yang [AP buruk]

bad

effect COMP
bad effects
c.

hantu Jepun yang [PP kat Malaysia]

in Malaysia

ghost Japan COMP

Japanese ghosts in Malaysia

d.

orang yang [VP [Vi duduk] kat sini]

live

person COMP

in here

people living here

(7)

a.

fotostat

yang [kita kena

beli kad]

copy.machine COMP we have.to buy card

a copy machine which you have to buy a card to use it
b.

hari yang [balik Kelantan]

day COMP return Kelantan
the day you returned to Kelantan

c.

Apa yang [kau tak seronok]?

what COMP you not happy
What are the things that you are not happy with?

(8)

So, hari tu

dia ajak

aku gi kampung dia, tapi yang masalah-nya, .

so day that she invite me go village

her but YANG problem-NYA

So she invited me to visit her village (that day), but the problem was .
In addition, I excluded those relative clauses in which the non-relativised argument is null (9). In
the examples below, the null arguments are shown by pro.

In Colloquial Malay, NP predicates in relative clauses are very common in contrast to Written Malay, where they are so
restricted as to make some authors regard them ungrammatical.



(9)

a.

Cakap Kelantan? Apa Opi yang [pro nak cakap ti]?4

speak Kelantan what

COMP

want speak

Speak Kelantanese? What shall I say?

b.

Kau se-orang

je

la

kat Malaysia ni

Opi yang [ti pakai pro], .

you one-person only PART in Malaysia this

COMP

wear

You are the only person in Malaysia who wears it.

Both subject and object relativisation allow more than one option depending on the selection of
voice. There are two options for subject relativisation: morphological active (10a) and bare active
(10b).
(10)

a.

orang Opi yang [ti sudah mem-baca buku itu]

person

COMP

(morphological active; cf.(1a))

PERF MEN-read book that

the person who has already read the book

b.

orang Opi yang [ti sudah baca buku itu]

person

COMP

(bare active; cf. (1b))

PERF read book that

the person who has already read the book

Therefore, what must be investigated are: (i) whether both options are also available in Colloquial
Malay and (ii) the frequency of each option.
For object relativisation, there are three options: morphological passive (11a), bare active (11b)
and bare passive (11c).
(11)

a.

buku Opi yang [ti di-baca ti (oleh)-nya]

book

COMP

DI-read

(morphological passive; cf. (1b))

(by)-her

the book which is read by her

b.

buku Opi yang [dia sudah baca ti]5

book

(bare active; cf. (1c))

COMP she PERF read

the book which she has already read

c.

buku Opi yang [ti sudah dia baca ti]

book

COMP

(bare passive; cf. (1d))

PERF she read

the book which she has already read

4
This sentence cannot be bare passive, that is, the pro cannot be between nak want and cakap speak (i.e. nak pro cakap),
for it is believed that the agent of bare passive is obligatory.
5
Despite the long-lasting misconception that only (surface) subject is accessible to relativisation in Malay/Indonesian just
as other Austronesian languages like Tagalog and Malagasy (Yeoh 1979: ch. 4; Comrie 1981: 150), direct object is in fact
relativisable if the blocking by the prefix meN- (Saddy 1991) does not come into play (Chung 1976a; Musgrave 2001; Cole
& Hermon 2005; Nomoto 2006a). In relation to object relativisation, Hassal (2005) reports cases where the objects are
relativised even when they cross the prefix meN-. In such cases, the blocking effect seems not at work. Further research is
needed.



Therefore, what must be investigated are: (i) which options are available in Colloquial Malay and
(ii) the frequency of each option. Note here that a fourth category is needed to classify all the
instances that occur in the corpus: indeterminate. Recall that bare active and bare passive are
distinguished based on the relative position between the agent and auxiliary/negation/adverb. This
means that if the latter element is absent in a clause, that clause will be indeterminate between bare
active and bare passive. Thus, buku yang dia baca the book which he read can be analysed as
either bare active (12a) or bare passive (12b).
(12)

a.

buku Opi yang [dia baca ti]

b.

buku Opi yang [ti dia baca ti]

book

COMP he read

The above are the points investigated by Cole et al. (2006) for Jakarta Indonesian. Moreover,
the present study also examines the person of the agent in object relativisation. Third person is
further divided into pronoun (Pro), non-pronoun (Non-Pro) and zero (). The agent of a
morphological passive sentence may not be expressed explicitly. By examining the person of the
agent, I will show that the complementary distribution mentioned in the second last paragraph of
section 2 is a fallacy (in Colloquial Malay as well).

4.
4.1

Results and analysis

Subject relativisation

The result for subject relativisation is shown in Table 2.

Table 2.

Voice choice in subject relativisation

Morphological active

Bare active

63

122

It is obvious that both morphological and bare active are available in Colloquial Malay. In terms of
frequency, the approximate ratio of morphological and bare active is 1:2. Some authors describe
this feature of Colloquial Malay as the omission of the prefix meN- (e.g. Onozawa 1996: 226).
However, such a description relies on a false and, I think, unhealthy widespread assumption that the
colloquial variety is merely a simplified version of the written variety. If one is to study Colloquial
Malay in its own right6, it is more adequate to say that bare active is the unmarked voice in
6

Nomoto (2006b) stresses the importance of the study of Colloquial Malay in its own right by demonstrating how poorly a
run-of-the-mill preposition kat in Colloquial Malay has been described and how it is worth a serious look. In Nomoto &
Tsuji (2006), we maintain that Written Malay and Colloquial Malay are two distinct varieties in diglossia. If this
characterisation of ours is correct, it can be another reason why Colloquial Malay must be studied (, taught and learned)
along with Written Malay.



Colloquial Malay and the prefix meN- can be added to bring about some additional effects such as
formality.
Below are some examples from the corpus, of morphological actives (13) and bare actives (14)
in subject relativisation.
(13)

Morphological active
a.

Biasanya siapa yang [me-lakukan samseng] ni?

usually

who COMP MEN-do

gangster] this

Who will be gangsters usually?

b.

Sepatutnya ibu
rightfully
bukan dia
not

bapa dia

yang [men-didik

anak-anak],

mother father his/her COMP MEN-educate children

yang [men-dera

anak-anak].

he/she COMP MEN-abuse children

The parents should be the ones who educate their children, not the ones who abuse
them.
(14)

Bare active
a.

Tapi tak semua yang [ambil dadah] tu

but not all

COMP take drug

nak hilangkan tekanan.

that want lose

pressure

But not all of those who take drugs want to relieve their stress.
b.

Pakistan tu

ramai yang [jual karpet], petang-petang datang tempat aku

Pakistan that many COMP sell carpet

afternoon

come place

my

jual karpet.
sell carpet
There are many Pakistanis who sell carpets; they often come to my place in the
afternoon to sell carpets.
4.2

Object relativisation

The result for object relativisation is shown in Table 3. The number of bare active will increase
significantly if one adopts a more restrictive definition of bare passive. See footnote 7 (p. 106) for
the details. Concrete examples of each category are provided at the end of this section.
Table 3.

Voice choice in object relativisation

Morphological passive (P1)

Bare active

Bare passive (P2)

Indeterminate

38

23

11

203



All the three possible voices were observed. Then, it seems reasonable to conclude that they all
exist in Colloquial Malay. However, a sociolinguistic factor needs to be considered at this point,
namely code-mixing.
It is the consideration of code-mixing that led Cole et al. (2006) to conclude that bare passive
(P2) does not exist in Jakarta Indonesian. Consider the results of a similar examination into four
corpora of Jakarta Indonesian obtained by them. CHILD consists of utterances by children, A-C of
utterances by adults talking to children, and A-A1 and A-A2 of utterances by adults talking to
adults.
Table 4.

Jakarta Indonesian (Cole et al. 2006)

Corpus (speaker)

Morphological passive (P1) Bare active

Bare passive (P2)

Indeterminate

CHILD (children)

56

26

A-C (adults)

65

23

A-A1 (adults)

28

16

39

A-A2 (adults)

51

12

17

94

Note that in A-A1 and A-A2 the number of bare passives (shown in boldface) is robust enough to
confirm their existence in Jakarta Indonesian. They argue that such instances are mixed Standard
Indonesian expressions. The background sociolinguistic fact is that code-mixing with Standard
Indonesian is a characteristic of the mesolectal level of speech while it seldom occurs at the
basilectal level. A-A1 and A-A2 represent the former and CHILD and A-C represent the latter. If
one looks at CHILD and A-C, which represent the basilect, there are only two instances of bare
passive in both corpora. Therefore, they conclude in an earlier version (Cole et al. 2005) that P2 [=
bare passiveHN] does not occur in JI [= Jakarta IndonesianHN] proper, using basilectal JI as
the gold standard for JI. The construction does occur in mesolectal registers where the use of
forms and constructions from the acrolectal language [= Standard IndonesianHN] would be
expected.
Turning back to Colloquial Malay, are the eleven instances of bare passive mixed Written
Malay? The possibility of the answer being yes is quite high. In my impression, most of the
conversation in the corpus is at some level quite close to the basilect where code-mixing with
Written Malay occurs only occasionally. Since I do not have a corpus of childrens speech at hand,
nor do I know whether any attempts to build such a corpus have been made so far, I cannot prove
the correctness of that impression in the same way as done by Cole et al. (2006). Further research is
necessary.
Instead, I examined who produced how many bare actives and passives. The result is shown in
Table 5. Of the 20 speakers, only five produced bare passives. On the other hand, bare actives are
produced by as many as 16 speakers. If bare passive had the same status as bare active in the voice



system of Colloquial Malay, it must have been produced more frequently and by more speakers.
Furthermore, all of the five speakers who produce bare passives also produce bare actives, but no
one produces only bare passives. These facts endorse the idea that the eleven instances of bare
passive are actually mixed Written Malay. In conclusion, bare passive cannot be included in the
voice system of Colloquial Malay. As a consequence, the instances assigned to the category
Indeterminate turn out to be those of Bare active except for some mixed Written Malay
expressions.
Table 5.

The number of bare actives and passives per speaker

Speaker

Bare active

Bare passive

Total

23

11

Next, let us focus on the person of the agent. Table 6 (p. 106) summarises the result.
The following two points are revealed from this table. Firstly, contrary to the claim of
prescriptive grammarians and strong proponents of bentuk persona, there is no complementary
distribution observed between morphological passive and bare passive (see the second last
paragraph of section 2). Bare passive can be used for a third person agent, regardless of whether it
is a pronoun or not. The complementary distribution does not hold between morphological passive
and bare active either.



Table 6.

The person of the agent

Morphological passive (P1)

Bare active

Bare passive (P2)

Indeterminate

14

84

57

Pro

34

Non-Pro

11

287

25

Secondly, when the agent is overt, bare active is the normal voice in object relativisation. This
is the case with all persons. It appears that bare active is the only choice for first and second person
agents. However, it may not be true. The fact that the corpus includes no instance of morphological
passive with first and second person agents has to do with the functional difference between
morphological passive and bare active. The agent of a morphological passive is syntactically
demoted to adjunct whereas that of a bare active is an argument. In connection with this, the agent
of a bare active is neutral informationally. However, the agent of a morphological passive is not so.
They are backgrounded when not expressed overtly and foregrounded when expressed overtly. First
and second person agents, being the immediate participants of conversations, usually need not and
should not be foregrounded. Explicit mention (i.e. foregrounding) of unnecessary or inappropriate
first and second person agents will lead to lack of politeness. The relevance of politeness to the
absence of first and second person agents in morphological passives is also pointed out by Shibata
(1992) and Cole et al. (2006).
In passing, the agents of bare actives are sometimes silent in Colloquial Malay. I analyse them
as null pronouns (pro). They are silent but existent unlike the agents of morphological actives,
which are not existent in the syntactic (constituent) structure at all.
The voice choice in object relativisation in Colloquial Malay can be summarised as follows:
(15)

Voice choice in object relativisation

The unmarked voice is bare active. Morphological passive is marked, with the agent
either foregrounded or backgrounded. (Bare passive does not exist in Colloquial Malay.)

Recall here that bare active is the unmarked voice in subject relativisation too.
Finally, examples of object relativisation with each category are given below. (16)-(18) are
examples of Morphological passives.
7

Cole et al. (2006) would code these 28 instances as bare actives since they assume that the agent of bare passive is limited
to pronouns (and nouns used as pronoun substitutes). I do not accept such an assumption in this paper, respecting two
apparent bare passives with third person non-pronoun agents (see examples (27)). But if I did so, things would rather turn
for the better. This is because the number of bare actives in object relativisation would increase by 28 to 51, with 38
morphological actives and 11 bare passives (see Table 3), which is more favourable to my hypothesis that bare active is the
unmarked voice and bare passive does not exist in Colloquial Malay.



(16)

Third person pronoun agent (3, Pro)

a.

Rupanya

tau,

jauh-jauh dia merantau-rantau, rupanya

apparently know, far

abang

she go.abroad

sebelah rumah

apparently near

house

aku juga yang [di-ambil-nya].

elder.brother my too COMP DI-take-her

It seems, you know, she went to study in countries faraway, but the man chosen by
her in the end was a neighbour to my elder brothers.
b.

yang [di-bunuh-nya] tu
COMP DI-kill-him
orang luar-lah,

pun orang Korea, yang membunuh tu

that too person Korea COMP kill

that

bukan Malaysia .

person outside-PART not

Malaysia

the one who was killed is Korean, the one who killed (the Korean) is an
outsider, not Malaysian .
(17)

Third person non-pronoun agent (3, Non-Pro)

Contohnya yang [di-buat oleh Era] la.
for.example COMP DI-make by

Era PART

For example, the one made by Era.

(18)

Third person zero agent (3, )

a.

Tapi kan, jenis senjata yang [di-gunakan] memang mengancam nyawa la.
but not kind weapon COMP DI-use

indeed

threaten

life

PART

But the weapons used were of the kind that really threatens your life.
b.

Tetapi kalau CD lain yang original, yang [di-jual di Malaysia], kalau

but

if

CD other COMP original COMP DI-sell in Malaysia

if

satu cerita berapa?

one story how.much
But how much are other original CDs sold in Malaysia for a piece?
(19)-(22) are examples of Bare actives.
(19)

First person agent (1)

a.

La la, tu

yang [aku duk

INT INT that COMP I

fikir] tu, eiyy.

PROG think that INT

Oh, come on; thats what I was thinking.

b.

Aku tak boring sebab

I

aku banyak kerja, aku banyak aktiviti yang [aku

not bored because I

many

work I

many

activity COMP I

boleh buat].
can

do

Im not bored because I have a lot of work and many activities that I can do.



(20)

Second person agent (2)

Macam, macam mana ah,
Like

cuba kau spesifik apa yang [kau nak tau].

PART try

how

you specific what COMP you want know

How, how should I explain to you? Be specific about what you want to know.
(21)

Third person pronoun agent (3, Pro)

a.

Test bertulis itu pun susah,

tapi dia carry on boleh lagi, lepas itu

test written that even difficult but he carry on can

more after that

macam ada-lah satu part yang [dia tak lepas].

be-PART one part COMP he not pass

like

Even the written test was difficult, but he could carry on further, and after that, like,
there was a part that he didnt pass.
b.

, yang penting

dapat duit,

COMP important get

itu saja yang [diorang dapat fikirkan].

money that only COMP they

can

think

, whats important is to get money, thats the only thing that they can think
about.
(22)

Third person non-pronoun agent (3, Non-Pro)

Kita tahu bahasa
we

lain yang [orang lain tak tahu].

know language other COMP person other not know

We know other languages, which others dont know.

(23)-(26) are examples of Bare passives.
(23)

First person agent (1)

a.

Apa yang [boleh kita kaitkan dengan samseng ni]?

what COMP can

we connect with

gangster this

What can we connect with the gangsters?

b.

Kau bayangkan-lah berapa

belas pinggan yang [boleh kita makan].

you imagine-PART how.many teen dish

COMP can

we eat

Imagine ten and how many dishes (of food) we can eat.
(24)

Second person agent (2)

Ko suka melukis, sebab
you like paint

tu

ko cuba mengaplikasikan ko punya minat

because that you try

dengan ko punya bidang jurusan

with

you possess area

apply

tu

you possess interest that

yang [bakal ko ceburi].

direction COMP will you be.involved.in

You like painting, so you try to apply your interest to the area that you will be involved
in the future.



(25)

Third person pronoun agent (3, Pro)

Kita kena
we

la

balas

balik apa yang [telah diorang buat kat kita], .

have.to PART answer back what COMP PERF they

do

to us

We have to answer what they did to us in kind, .

(26)

Third person non-pronoun agent (3, Non-Pro)

a.

Kau tahu kan apa yang [akan polis lakukan pada samseng ni].
you know not what COMP will police do

to

gangster this

You must know what the police will do against the gangsters.
b.

Selain

daripada hantu-hantu ni, apa lagi hantu yang [selalu orang

other.than from

ghosts

sebut-sebut]

tu?

this what more ghost COMP always people

mention.repeatedly that
Apart from these ghosts, what are the ghosts that people always mention?
(27)-(30) are examples of Indeterminate instances.
(27)

First person agent (1)

a.

, subjek yang [kita ambik sem

subject COMP we take

ni] apa lagi ah?

semester this what more PART

, what are the other subjects that we take this semester?

b.

Semua ek,
all

macam kebanyakannya yang [kita pakai] ni

PART like

mostly

COMP we use

semua Jepun

this all

Japan

buat, Suzuki, Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki semua.

make Suzuki, Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki all
Everything, like, mostly, what we use are all Japanese products, Suzuki, Yamaha,
Honda and Kawasaki, everything.
(28)

Second person agent (2)

a.

Berita apa yang [kau baca]?

news what COMP you read
What news did you read?

b.

Makan-lah yang [ko

beli tadi].

east-PART COMP you buy just.now

Just eat what you bought just now.
(29)

Third person pronoun agent (3, Pro)

a.

Mungkin dia
maybe

akan sedar la

apa yang [dia

lakukan] tu.

he/she will realise PART what COMP he/she do

Maybe he/she will realise what he/she did.



that

b.

Mentang-mentang kenderaan yang [diorang bawak] tu

just.because

vehicle

COMP they

drive

besar, ha.

that big

INT

Just because the vehicles they drive are big, yeah.

(30)

Thrid person non-pronoun agent (3, Non-Pro)

a.

, lagi satu masalah yang [Malaysia hadapi] aku rasa apa, masalah
more one problem COMP Malaysia face

feel what problem

setinggan.
squatter
, another problem that Malaysia is facing is, I feel, what, the problem of
squatters.
b.

Kari yang [nenek

aku buat] tu

lain tau.

curry COMP grandmother my make that other know

You know, the curry my grandmother makes is different.

5.

Conclusion

In this paper, I examined the voice employed in relative clauses in Colloquial Malay. I claimed that
the voice system of Colloquial Malay lacks bare passive. A few instances of bare passive observed
in the corpus can be regarded as a result of code-mixing with Written Malay. Thus, the voice
system of Colloquial Malay proper consists of three types, namely morphological active,
morphological passive and bare active.
Among these three types, bare active is the unmarked voice. Since the verb in bare active does
not have the prefix meN-, which blocks any NP movement across itself, both subject and object can
be relativised in bare active. There is no restriction on the person of the agent as always pointed out
for object relativisation in Written Malay. The figures of each category in the columns of Bare
active and Indeterminate in Table 6 verify this.
The remaining two voices with explicit voice morphology, i.e. morphological active and
morphological passive, are literally marked. The prefix meN- of morphological active adds some
additional (perhaps stylistic) effects. Moreover, objects cannot be relativised in morphological
active sentences owing to the blocking effect by the prefix meN- mentioned above. As for
morphological passive, the agent is either foregrounded (when present) or backgrounded (when
absent) as was stated in (15). This brings about an apparent restriction on the agent to only third
person.
The present study only dealt with the voice in Colloquial Malay and counted on secondary
sources for that in Written Malay. In another study, Isamu Shoho and I take up Written Malay as
well as Colloquial Malay and compare their voice systems (Nomoto & Shoho 2006). The results of
the present study only already imply a few noticeable differences between the two. However, when



the data from the primary sources are investigated using the same methodology, the differences will
be corroborated and manifest themselves more vividly.

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 1

1 Cole et al. (2006)

2P2

P2

 morphological activemorphological
passivebare activebare passive 4
meN- di-

(1)

2
3
meN-
4

 63
122 2 2



 2
meN-

meN-

 38 23 11
203 3 3

11
Cole et al. (2006)

4
2

 11
Cole

20 16 5

5 11

203

 6
12 3 3