The antipassive in Bantu

Abstract The antipassive, an object-demoting diathesis commonly associated with ergative languages, has so far largely gone unnoticed in Bantu languages, which are of the accusative type. In this article, comparative evidence is raised to demonstrate that the antipassive is a voice construction to be reckoned with in Bantu. A robust typology of Bantu voice constructions is developed on the basis of the scarce data available in the literature. This evidence is reinterpreted in the light of original data from a number of Bantu languages, such as Cilubà and Kirundi, which were the subject of a more in-depth analysis. It is shown how the antipassive generally developed as a specific reading of the highly polysemous verbal suffix