The Indonesian Di- Passive and Discourse Contexts

Abstract

The syntactic analysis of the formation of an Indonesian active clause into a passive one has been much done in the literature. However, the research of the Indonesian passive into its discourse contexts has been understudied. The present study seeks to fill the lacuna. The findings show that an active clause and its passive clause counterpart change in the topic-comment relation, characterized by a change of definiteness status in the NP subject of the passive clause (NP patient) which serves to maintain the semantic interdependence between the NP object of the active clause and the NP subject (of the passive clause). The prohibition of passive clauses with the first and second person agent by-phrases is dependent upon the type of verbs that the di-passive co-occur with. NP agent by-phrases is also affected by discourse contexts tied to (im)politeness. It is also shown that the definiteness status of NP patients in agentless di-passive is affected by that of the NP agent. In addition to this, the omission of the NP agent by-phrase is made to avoid attributing direct responsibility for the action to the agent itself.