Malay grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the Malay language (Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore) and Indonesian (Indonesia and Timor Leste). This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. In Malay and Indonesian, there are four basic parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and grammatical function words (particles). Nouns and verbs may be basic roots, but frequently they are derived from other words by means of prefixes and suffixes.
For clarity, ⟨ê⟩ is used to denote schwa /ə/, while ⟨e⟩ is used to denote pure /e/, as both Malay and Indonesian in their orthography do not distinguish both phonemes and written as ⟨e⟩ (Indonesian also uses accentless ⟨e⟩ for /ə/ and ⟨é⟩ for /e/ instead as in Javanese).
Word formation
Malay is an agglutinative language, and new words are formed by three methods. New words can be created by attaching affixes onto a root word (affixation), formation of a compound word (composition), or repetition of words or portions of words (reduplication). However, the Malay morphology has been simplified significantly, resulting on extensive derivational morphology but also having minimal inflectional morphology. Because of this, Malay and Indonesian are together classified as partially isolating languages, like other languages spoken in the mainland Southeast Asia.
Affixes
Root words are either nouns or verbs, which can be affixed to derive new words, e.g., masak (to cook) yields mêmasak (cooks, as a verb), mêmasakkan (cooks for), dimasak (cooked) as well as pêmasak (a cook), masakan (a meal, cookery). Many initial consonants undergo mutation when prefixes are added: e.g., sapu (sweep) becomes pênyapu (broom); panggil (to call) becomes mêmanggil (calls/calling), tapis (to sift) becomes mênapis (sifts).
Other examples of the use of affixes to change the meaning of a word can be seen with the word ajar (teach): ajar = teach ajar-an = teachings bêl-ajar = to learn, to study (the object is not necessary) mêng-ajar = to teach di-ajar = being taught (intransitive) di-ajar-kan = being taught (transitive) mêmpêl-ajar-i = to learn, to study (the object is necessary) dipêl-ajar-i = being studied pêl-ajar = student pêng-ajar = teacher pêl-ajar-an = subject, education pêng-ajar-an = lesson, moral of story pêmbêl-ajar-an = learning têr-ajar = taught (accidentally) têrpêl-ajar = well-educated, literally "been taught" bêrpêl-ajar-an = is educated, literally "has education"
There are four types of affixes, namely prefixes (in Malay: awalan), suffixes (akhiran), circumfixes (apitan) and infixes (sisipan). These affixes are categorised into noun affixes, verb affixes, and adjective affixes.
Noun affixes are affixes that form nouns upon addition to root words. The following are examples of noun affixes:
The prefix pêr- drops its r before r, l and frequently before p, t, k. In some words it is peng-; though formally distinct in both phonologically and functionally, these are treated as variants of the same prefix in Malay grammar books.
Similarly, verb affixes are attached to root words to form verbs. In Malay, there are:
Adjective affixes are attached to root words to form adjectives:
In addition to these affixes, Malay also has a lot of borrowed affixes from other languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic and English. For example, maha-, pasca-, eka-, bi-, anti-, pro- etc.
Reduplication
Reduplication (kata ganda or kata ulang) in the Malay language is a very productive process. It is mainly used for forming plurals, but sometimes it may alter the meaning of the whole word, or change the usage of the word in sentences.
Forms
There are four types of words reduplication in Malay, namely
Full reduplication (kata ganda penuh (Malaysian) or kata ulang utuh (Indonesian) or dwilingga) Partial reduplication (kata ganda separa (Malaysian) or kata ulang sebagian (Indonesian) or dwipurwa) Rhythmic reduplication (kata ganda berentak (Malaysian) or kata ulang salin suara (Indonesian)) Reduplication of meaning
Full reduplication is the complete duplication of the word, separated by a dash (-). For example, buku (book) when duplicated form buku-buku (books), while the duplicated form of batu (stone) is batu-batu (stones).
Partial reduplication repeats only the initial consonant of the word, such as dêdaun (leaves) from the word daun (leaf), and têtangga (neighbor) from the word tangga (ladder). The words are usually not separated by spaces or punctuation, and each is considered a single word.