This volume on Kifuliiru, a Bantu (J) language of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and its companion volume, The Kifuliiru Language: Volume 2: A Descriptive Grammar, is one of the most thorough and yet readable Bantu grammars available. Designed primarily as language documentation rather than as theoretical analysis, these volumes aim at a thorough presentation of the many interesting features found in a typical Interlacustrine Bantu (J) language.

A special highlight of this first volume is an unusually detailed and thorough autosegmental analysis of Kifuliiru tone, with emphasis on the realization of tone in an extensive variety of verbal forms and constructions, with and without various object prefixes and including passive and causative variations of most forms. This allows clear evaluation of the concomitant tonal changes. Whereas in most Bantu languages a high tone seems to contrast only with its absence, this thorough analysis of Kifuliiru indicates a synchronic three-way distinction in verbs between high (H), low (L), and toneless (0). Verbs of all three classes are used to illustrate each different grammatical tone pattern.

One chapter is dedicated to a detailed presentation of the morphology and morphophonology of derivation in Kifuliiru. Discussion of the verbal extensions includes the morphophonological and syntactic aspects as well as the semantic nuances of each extension. An exhaustive treatment of the formation of the resultative (often called perfective) form of the verb stem is also included.

Karen Van Otterloo received a master's degree in linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1977. She and her husband, Roger (author of Volume 2), lived with their family in the Kifuliiru-speaking area of what was then Zaire from 1980-1996, and still continue contact and involvement today.