Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Active and Passive (Aktif dan Pasif)

If someone does something to someone or something, the verb that describes that action is a transitive verb. The one who does the action is the agent. The person or thing that receives the action of the action is the recipient. In Indonesian, if the agent and/or the action is the main concern of the sentence, the "active" form of the verb is used, which means the verb takes the prefix meN-*. Often, but not always, the agent will be the subject of an active sentence. The exception is if the verb is in a "yang phrase" and the agent is not in that phrase; then, the agent is the predicate and the verb in the "yang phrase" is active. If the agent is in the "yang phrase" with the verb, the verb is "passive". If the recipient of the action is the main concern of the sentence, the "passive" form of the verb is used. Often, but not always, the recipient will be the subject of a passive sentence. The exception is as mentioned above: if the verb is in a "yang phrase" and the recipient is not in that phrase, the recipient is the predicate and the verb in the "yang phrase" is passive. In the passive, the verb is preceded either by :

(1) short forms of the intimate pronouns (ku-, kau-) or di-; or by

(2) the full forms of the formal pronouns (saya; Anda, Saudara, Bapak, etc;
beliau); or by the plural pronouns (kami, kita, kalian, mereka).

In all cases, NOTHING (no auxiliary word such as bisa, harus, akan, etc.) comes between the pronoun form and the verb stem. In the case of third person passive, the noun or pronoun(-nya) which designates the agent comes after the verb, optionally preceded by oleh ("by"). Except for sentences where the verb is in a yang phrase, the subject of a passive verb is the recipient, and often precedes the verb. With subject /predicate inversion the recipient-subject may come after the passive verb.

Taken from Seasite.niu.edu (click on that link for more examples)

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