This paper attempts to analyse the passive construction forms in Malay and examine its corresponding usage in English. The comparison will establish whether the results show a close fit in the typology and functional domains between Malay and English.

The function of the passives is characterized in terms of three functional domains - clausal topic assignment, impersonalization and de-transitivization. A total of 114 Malay passive sentences and an English translation of these sentences were obtained from two narrative texts (a Malay text and its English translation). Each of the Malay sentences was first coded as exemplifying one of the following passive construction forms or patterns - di+V+(oleh)+agent, di+V+nya, di+V, ter-, and meN- . The English translations obtained were classified as follows: passive participle, passive participle+agent, active transitive, agentive passive, agentless passive, intransitive, vague 'they' and others (non-translations). One observation could be made about the Malay passives in this study. Unlike English where the text frequency of the passive is exceeding low (compared to the active), the text frequency of Malay passives is higher than that of the actives. It does seems that the Malay 'passive' has assumed the discourse function normally performed by active clauses in most languages. Generally, the active clause in language would be the one responsible for conveying the bulk of new information in discourse. One claim is that this peculiar feature reflects Malay perception of action, intent and responsibility, that of suppressing agent identity and disclaiming responsibility. Thus, culpability is also investigated in this study.