This collection brings together most of the world's leading Bantuists, as well as some of the most promising younger scholars interested in the history, comparison, and description of Bantu languages. The Bantu languages, numbering as many as 500, have been at the center of cutting-edge theoretical research in phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Besides the issues of classification and internal sub-grouping, this volume treats historical and comparative aspects of many of the significant typological features for which this language group is known: vowel height harmony, noun classes, elaborate tense-aspect systems, etc. The result is a compilation that provides the most up-to-stand understanding of these and other issues that will be of interest not only to Bantuists and historical linguists, but also to those interested in the phonological, morphological and semantic issues arising within these highly agglutinative Bantu languages.