Abstract Cuwabo has two different derivational suffixes to form passive verb stems, i.e. -iw and -uw. Unlike in many other Bantu languages, these suffixes are not phonologically conditioned allomorphs of one single morphological passive marker. They are interchangeable as productive passive markers, but -uw has a broader functional range than -iw. The suffix -uw actually is a ‘quasi-middle’ marker as defined by Dom et al.: it semantically focuses the activity expressed by the verb on one single argument, and it syntactically signals the intransitivity of a given verb stem. In this article, it is shown that -uw in Cuwabo is the regular reflex of the Proto-Bantu intransitive separative suffix *-ʊk whose semi-productive intransitivising function as part of a causative/anticausative alternation was functionally broadened to productive passivisation leading to competition with -iw, the inherited reflex of the Proto-Bantu passive suffix *-ibʊ.

中文翻译：

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关于Cuwabo（Bantu P34）的被动同形异源的起源

摘要Cuwabo具有两个不同的派生后缀以形成被动动词词干，即-iw和-uw。与许多其他班图语不同，这些后缀不是单个形态学被动标记的语音学条件同素异形。它们可以互换用作有效的被动标记，但是-uw的功能范围比-iw宽。后缀-uw实际上是Dom等人定义的“准中间”标记：它在语义上将动词表示的活动集中在一个单独的参数上，并且在语法上表示给定动词词干的不及物性。在本文中，