These twenty-one words are used like prepositions, and are often classified as such, but the true prepositions are the three initial words.
Atas, bawah, dalam, hadap-an, bĕlakang, luar, and sabĕrang here are really substantives governed by the prepositions di, ka, and deri. Some of these words aptly illustrate the difficulty of classifying Malay words according to the parts of speech usually recognised by grammarians. Dalam, for instance, has already been classified in the preceding section as an adverb. It is also substantive, adjective, and preposition.
Dalam (subs.), interior, depth; as penghulu dalam, the guardian of the interior (inner apartments); dalam-nia tiga depa, its depth is three fathoms.
Dalam (adj.), deep; as ter-lalu dalam sungei ini, this river is very deep.
Dalam (adv.), inside; as ada orang dalam, there are people inside.
Dalam (prep.), in; as kain yang dalam gĕdong itu, cloth in that warehouse.
In Malay a substantive in the possessive case immediately follows the substantive denoting the possessor (supra, p. 47). In the sentences bĕlakang gunong, the back of the mountain; hadap-an raja, the presence of the king; sabĕrang sungei, the farther side of the river, all the words are substantives, gunong, raja, and sungei being in the possessive case.
Now let the prepositions di, ka, and deri be added to these sentences.
Di-bĕlakang gunong, at the back of the mountain, may be more shortly translated behind the mountain; so ka-hadap-an raja may be rendered before the king, and deri-sabĕrang sungei from beyond the river.
Here, though the purport of the Malay phrases di-bĕlakang, ka-hadap-an, and deri-sabĕrang are correctly rendered by English prepositions, only the first portion of each phrase is a Malay preposition.