Appendix:Indonesian verbs

Unlike many languages, however, many verbs in Indonesian including other Malayic languages are defective to some extent. There is also many examples where meanings change in certain forms (notably tinggal (“to live, is left”) → meninggal (“to die”)) However, there is a few truly irregular verbs, notably *erti (“to understand”), ajar (“to teach”) and tahu (“to know”). Most of this page describe that of formal Indonesian, verb system in the colloquial one is greatly reduced. See also Appendix:Indonesian affixes.

There are some constraints: the emphatic suffixes always cooccur with other verbal forms (thus the jussive is coexisting with the imperative), combination *teper- or *terper- never occurs except in ajar and daya (te(r)percaya ← percaya is a borrowing, this is the reason why Indonesian verbs are otherwise defective), and the suffix -i does not occur in verbs ending in the same vowel -i (nor any verbs with diphthong -ai or -ei). Violation of this rule can be observed in speakers influenced by Banjarese and Madurese.

The names for verb suffixes -i and -kan are unclear, since Indonesian grammars are largely focused to give affixes with the implicit functions, usually within a single chapter. While there are cognates in the Batak languages, their names are even variable:

Regarding the syntax of Indonesian verbs, see below.

Object enclitics are only used after transitive verb forms, so they cannot be simply used without knowing their meanings first. However, these sometimes can be used following few verbal nouns in the colloquial language, such as kata / bilang and makan, technically as a possessive suffix. Thus kataku means either "my saying" or "I say". Such forms are usually used in excalamatory or interrogative sentences (Kok makanmu kek (g)itu? "Why you eat like that?").

The passive suffix di- is normally joined to the verb without a space, while etymologically unrelated preposition di (“in”) is separated by a space. In practice, however, this caused confusion even among native speakers, to the extent that the preposition can be joined with certain words such as disana, disini, disitu.

Colloquial Indonesian (which actually mostly derives from Betawi), however, tends to fossilize verb forms into derivations. The suffix -kan usually becomes unrelated -in, while meng- is simplified into ng- (completely fused with the next consonant). The prefix per- later became non-productive.

Unlike languages of the Philippine type, the verb system was reduced to only two voices, generally termed as active and passive voice (although can be termed more accurately as actor and undergoer voice/trigger). At the same time, it has been complemented by *-i (more direct) and *-akən (more oblique). This system is called Indonesian type. The Batak languages, Javanese, and Bali–Sasak–Sumbawa languages also share similar verb systems. These examples show symmetrical voice.

In some cases, passive verbs can become active, as long as the object is animate (most often humans or animals, but also technological objects behaving animate like robots). Examples:

• Seekor	kucing	memakan	seekor	ikan
  one-tail	cat	AV-eat	one-tail	fish
  "A cat ate a fish."

• Seekor	ikan	dimakan	seekor	kucing
  one-tail	fish	PV-eat	one-tail	cat
  "A cat ate a fish = A fish was eaten by a cat."

• Seekor	kucing	diberi	makan	seekor	ikan
  one-tail	fish	PV-give	eat	one-tail	cat
  "A cat was given a fish. = A fish was given to a cat."

If a noun is used alone, a subject of a passive verb requires -nya (“definite article”) (at least in the colloquial language, the similar situation also occurs in Tagalog).

• Rizqi	(m)baca	buku
  Rizqi	AV-read	book
  "Rizqi reads a book."

• Bukunya	dibaca	Rizqi.
  book-3.SG	PV-read	Rizqi
  "Rizqi read the book. = The book was read by Rizqi."

There would be considered four types of verbs in Indonesian:

• Bound verbs (limited to *erti)
• Intransitive verbs
• Transitive verbs
• Ditransitive verbs (verbs requiring two objects)
• Nominal verbs (verbs derived from nouns)

Like most Southeast Asian languages, separate particles are used to mark tenses or aspects. Here is the list.

Bakal and bakalan are almost synonymous, except that the latter is used with the implication that the action will happen (very) soon.

To explicitly mark an action that happened in the past, tadi (“earlier”) or kemarin (“yesterday”) is used. These can be used together with the tense/aspect particles.

This is the only known fully conjugated verb in Indonesian (has 30 inflected rows, with total of 32 forms), although the active rows and causative rows are morphologically irregular. Belajar may be also used irregularly as an imperative, as the root is actually hardly used as such. However, certain forms are relatively rarely used: causative active and causative applicatives rows.

Most nominal roots, including the above verb from an etymologically nominal root, are almost fully conjugated (has 33 rows), except the causative involuntary rows.

Unlike the previous verbs, with only 10 rows are inflected. The causative forms of perbuat and the active berbuat has a slightly different meaning, that is "to do, commit" instead of "to make" (the verb "to do" is otherwise supplied by laku, effectively being suppletive in the meaning (here, these 12 rows are inflected).