This volume contains overviews on Afrasian as a whole and its constituent families plus 23 articlesby internationally known contributors. In order to arrive at a focussed volume of high-quality papers, the editors chose to restrict the contents to what is arguablyDiakonoff's major field among the many in which he was a world-renowned scholar. Diakonoff was the greatest comparative historical Afrasianist during his long productive career spanning the20th century. After a photograph of the dedicatee and a brief biography and bibliography of major publications of Diakonoff, written by Gabor Takacs, there follow the seven overviews and articles as follows (some titles abbreviated):Afrasian Overview (Bender)Semitic tuwar- 'bull' and its Relatives (Vaclav Blazhek)Some Afrasian Etymologies (Andrzej Zaborski)Proto-Afrasian Vowels (Saul Levin)Berber Overview (D. Appleyard)Origin of the Berber 'Participle' (Maarten Kossmann)La Vocalisation du protoberbere (Karl-G. Prasse)Chadic Overview (Russell G. SchuhThird Consonants in Chadic Verbal Roots (Christopher Ehret)West Chadic Verbal Suffixes (Schuh)Sibilant Affricates in Chadic (Olga Stolbova)Arabic D-stem in Chadic? (Herrmann JungraithmayrCushitic and Omotic Overview (Mauro Tosco)The Omotic Lexicon (Bender)Infix Genesis in South Cushitic (Roland Kie=DFling)Cushitic Adpositions and Semitic (Hans-Jurgen Sasse)South Cushitic Sibilant Affricates (Takacs)Carakter der "Zweiradikalen" Verben des Agyptischen (Joachim Friedrich uackReduplicative Passive in Older Egyptian (Chris H. Reintges)Semitic Overview (Appleyard)Ablaut and Aspect in Akkadian and Proto-Semitic (Vit Bubenik)Ethio-Semitic Negative NonPast (Grover Hudson) relative Markers in Ancient Ethiopic (Olga Kapeliuk)Proto-Semitic (Adrian Macelaru)Cognates to Akkadian Preposition ana in Ethiopia and South Arabia (David Testen)Surveying Bi-Consonantal Reduplication in Semitic (Peter Unseth).