The contribution of the current paper surrounded the occurrence of the canonical passive structure -igw- in Kinyakyusa sentences, a language spoken in northern Malawi and southern Tanzania in East Africa. I showed that this structure allows the canonical agentive DP to be demoted to oblique, while permitting the theme/patient DP to sit in the subject position. I argued that the other form, -w-, which occurs in a few verbs, cannot be treated as a passive because it provides stative reading. Though the stative form -w- appears similar in shape with the passive form in many Bantu languages, it given only the stative reading. In addition, in the paper I substantiated that the passivization strategy allows only the benefactive and theme/patient to be promoted to the subject position and to agree with the verb in the sentence. The locative DP can be fronted, but it will never agree with the subject on the verb. This is an angle that substantiates that the locatives do not get passivized in Kinyakyusa. Based on the current data, Kinyakyusa allows passivization for inalienable and alienable parts but without causative reading. The passivization is only possible for transitive verbs and generic agentive DPs. Passivization of messenger verbs is only possible in limited contexts.
アマニ ルセケロ (Mon,) studied this question.