Dear Bahasa List,

Is this the right way to submit messages for posting, i.e. send them to you in the body of an email?

I'd be grateful if you could post this query below.

Many thanks,

Tim

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Topic: Odd sentence construction

Could anyone offer an analysis of a sentence construction I just came across in an article from this week's Kompas?

" [[ Diperkirakan korban terus bertambah dan ]] jumlah kerusakan bangunan masih dilakukan pendataan. "

A conventional order of elements would be "Pendataan jumlah kerusakan bangunan masih dilakukan."

If the "pendataan" had had "-nya" added to it ("Jumlah kerusakan bangunan masih dilakukan pendataanNYA"], then the clause would be grammatical: a Possessor Topic-Comment clause. But "pendataan" doesn't have "yang" in this case.

What I'm wondering is: is this example just a once-off? Or does it represent a type of passive construction that people do use sometimes? And if people do use it, do they only use it with "lakukan"?

Thanks,

Tim