37.1878, Reviews: Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu: Eva-Marie Bloom Ström, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, and Lutz Marten (eds.) (2025)

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Subject: 37.1878, Reviews: Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu: Eva-Marie Bloom Ström, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, and Lutz Marten (eds.) (2025)

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Date: 23-May-2026
From: Andrew Harvey [andrewdtharvey at gmail.com]
Subject: Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Typology: Eva-Marie Bloom Ström, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, and Lutz Marten (eds.) (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1274

Title: Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Oxford University Press
           http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/morphosyntactic-variation-in-bantu-9780198821359?utm_source=linguistlist&utm_medium=listserv&utm_campaign=linguistics

Editor(s): Eva-Marie Bloom Ström, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, and
Lutz Marten

Reviewer: Andrew Harvey

SUMMARY
The Bantu languages, a family of approximately 500 living languages
(Hammarström 2019:17), are a kaleidoscope of grammatical contrasts.
Consider the contrasting examples below, where (a) is from Sambaa and
(b) from Swahili (capitalisation highlights verbal object markers):
a) Sambaa:  n-za-ha-CHI-M-nka Stella kitabu haja 'I gave Stella a book
there'  (Riedel 2009:60)
b) Swahili: ni-me-M-pa Juma vitabu vyote vitatu pale 'I have given
Juma all three books there'  (Riedel 2009:62)
In the Sambaa example, the verb takes two object markers (marking both
the argument kitabu 'book' CHI-, as well as the argument Stella M-);
in the Swahili example, the verb takes only one object marker (marking
the argument Juma M-). In fact, marking two arguments on the verb in
Swahili is never grammatical. This difference between Sambaa and
Swahili is merely a drop in the ocean of how Bantu languages vary
morphosyntactically. And it is this kaleidoscopic ocean into which the
volume at hand dives.
As an initial note, readers should be made aware that a review of this
same edited volume has been made by Kerr (2025), and are encouraged to
consult it alongside this one. I occasionally make reference to this
review, but otherwise, similarities between this review and Kerr's
should be seen as my strongly agreeing with her assessments, and being
unable to separate them from my own.
The study of Bantu languages is a burgeoning subfield, complete with
its own specialised conferences, as well as major publications (e.g.
Van de Velde et al. 2019, van der Wal 2025, Marten et al. 2025). As
such, some subfield-specific, as well as volume-specific conventions
and terms will be laid out here to help orient the non-specialist
reader.
Guthrie codes: The Guthrie codes are a series of geographically-based
identifiers used to refer to Bantu languages. These are typically
composed of a letter followed by two numbers – so, Sambaa is coded
G23, and Swahili is coded G42. The alphabetical codings are correlated
somewhat with genetic groupings (for example, Sambaa is more closely
related to Swahili than a language from, say, group R like Herero
R21), but this is not uniformly the case, and when a language's
genetic classification is adjusted, its Guthrie code stays the same.
In this review, at first mention of a language name, I will list its
Guthrie code, as well as its ISO 639-3 code (so Sambaa (G23) [ksb],
Swahili (G42) [swh], Herero (R21) [her]). For more on Guthrie codes,
see Hammarström (2019).
'Areal' and micro-variation: In this volume, the term 'areal'
typically refers to Bantu languages spoken in the same rough
geographic region, rather than the more technical use of areal to
refer to a Sprachbund denoting a situation in which unrelated or
distantly-related languages of a given region share linguistic
features in some meaningful way (cf. Hickey 2017, Campbell 2017, and
for an African example involving Bantu languages, see Kießling et al.
2008 and Harvey et al. 2023). The volume at hand views 'areas' as
groupings between more or less closely-related languages, upon which
examination of morphosyntactic micro-variation may be carried out.
Parameters: In this volume, parameters refer to surface-level
variation in individual constructions that obtain across a set of
languages. For example, Guérois et al. (2017:10) gives a parameter on
imperatives: 'Is the basic imperative formally identical to the verb
stem (root-extension-final.vowel)?' with three possible answers: 'Null
(unknown/missing); no; yes'. These 'surface-parameters' as they are
occasionally referred to in the current volume are in contrast to
so-called 'deep-parameters' of generative approaches which refer to a
setting that is either activated or not and results in regular
grammatical variation in human language. An example of a
'deep-parameter' of this kind would be Baker's (1996) 'Polysythesis
Parameter', stated initially as 'Every argument of a head element must
be related to a morpheme in the word containing the head' (p.14).
Surface-parameters aim to describe linguistic behaviour, whereas
deep-parameters seek to explain it.
Front matter: The front matter includes acknowledgements; a table of
contents; a list of figures, tables, and maps (each listed
separately); a list of abbreviations; as well as a section on the
contributors. Important to note is that glossing is not standardised
across chapters within the volume. This results in each chapter
representing what may be the same structure in slightly different
ways. This is not a major impediment to either understanding or
comparison, as each chapter provides a guide to their glossing in one
of the initial footnotes. The section on contributors provides an
opportunity to apply the same measures brought to bear on Nurse and
Philippson (2003) in Marten (2005:502) and on Van de Velde et al.
(2019) in van der Wal (2020:401). Of the 20 contributors to this book,
only four are from an African university, three are based at Asian
universities, and the remaining 13 are at institutions in Europe. Only
four are, as far as I can tell, native speakers of Bantu languages.
Most of the contributors are academically quite mature, with 15 having
defended their PhD dissertations more than 10 years ago. In 2020, van
der Wal hoped for more Africa-based scholars in future work on Bantu,
and here in 2025 I repeat that hope.
Chapter 1, "Morphosyntactic variation in Bantu: an introduction" (Lutz
Marten, Rozenn Guérois, Hannah Gibson, and Eva-Marie Bloom Ström),
presents the core topic of the volume, "provid[ing] a historical and
conceptual background to the study of morphosyntactic micro-variation
in Bantu, introducing and contextualizing this research field, as well
as highlighting results and challenges" (p.2). It does this through a
series of four subsections which read like a string of concise essays
on: the classification of the Bantu languages; comparative
linguistics; comparison of micro-variation and its connection to
dialectology; and an exploration of how these fields have come
together as morphosyntactic micro-variation in Bantu. The following
section gives a detailed outline of each chapter in the book, and the
final section closes the chapter with another topical essay on how the
languages in this book are named, and the politics thereof.
Part I. Morphosyntactic variation across Bantu
The first part brings together six chapters whose sample includes
languages from across the Bantu family, rather than a single
geographic area or subunit.
Chapter 2, "Comparative analysis of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu
languages: Parameters, data representation, and design" (Peter
Edelsten, Rozenn Guérois, and Lutz Marten), presents parametric
approaches to the study of morphosyntactic variation, and offers key
concepts for the organisation of such projects and their underlying
data (p.27). Following a review of previous parametric approaches, the
Bantu Morphosyntactic Variation database (BMV) (Marten et al. 2018) is
introduced as the focus of the rest of the chapter. First, two
dimensions of design are discussed: the first being empirical scope
(i.e. which languages are included), and the second being conceptual
scope (i.e. how parameters are worded and selected). Next, aspects of
how the data is presented and processed (both practical and technical)
are presented. The following subsection demonstrates how the BMV may
be used to visualise data and identify patterns, employing one case
study calculating the morphosyntactic similarity between nineteen East
African Bantu languages, and a second case study using historical data
from Old and Standard Swahili to, for example, compare how Swahili has
changed over time.
Chapter 3, "Micro-variation of noun-modifying constructions in Bantu
languages" (Nobuko Yoneda), aims to "explore the variation in the
semantic relations between the head noun and modifying clauses, and
determine whether the form of the noun-modifying constructions are
related to the range of their semantic relations" (p.53). Central to
this pursuit is the broadening of the concept of 'noun + modifying
clause' from relative constructions (e.g. "the man who sold a car" or
"the car which the man sold"), in which the head noun is an argument
of the relativised verb, to include appositive (e.g. "the rumour
(that) someone sold the car") and causal (e.g. "the money which I sold
a car" i.e. "the money which came to exist because I sold a car")
constructions, in which the head noun is not an argument of the
relativised verb (p.55). The data draws from a sample of ten Bantu
languages: Gikuyu (E51) [kik], Swahili, Jambiani (G43c) [swh], Ganda
(JE15) [lug], Kerewe (JE24) [ked], Fipa (M13) [fip], Namwanga (M22)
[mwn], Bemba (M42) [bem], Yao (P21) [yao], and Herero, for which only
the data from Bemba is attributed to a published source. The data from
Ganda, Namwanga, Jambiani, and Gikuyu were shared with the author by
other researchers, and the data from Swahili, Yao, Fipa, Herero, and
Kerewe are from the author's unpublished fieldnotes. The material
presented shows not only a diversity of relative clause formation
strategies, but also variation in which relations relative clauses can
express. Patterns are discussed in §3.4. It strikes me that no
distinction is made between Swahili subject relative and object
relative constructions (e.g. p.59, p.67), which are morphologically
different. Additionally, the Swahili "suffixed" relative construction
(e.g. 'a-pend-a-YE upweke ni mchawi' (he who keeps to himself is a
sorcerer)) where the capitalised form marks the relative morpheme, is
never discussed.
Chapter 4, "Reflexive and reciprocal marking in Bantu" (Justine
Mukhwana Sikuku), sets itself the goal of examining intrasentential
anaphora in selected Bantu languages via developing a typology based
on wider cross-linguistic literature, and presenting Bantu data which
shows reflexive and reciprocal marking varies both formally and
distributionally, as well as with regard to referential dependence.
The variation observed forms the basis for formulating parameters for
comparing reflexive and reciprocal patterns in Bantu languages
(p.77-78). The sample is made up of ten languages: Babanki [bbk],
Bafut [bfd], Fe'efe'e [fmp], Limbum [lmp], Bulu (A74a) [bum], Tuki
(A601) [bag], Ikalanga (S16) [kck], CiNsenga (N41) [nse], Bemba, and
Lubukusu (JE31C) [bxk]. All data is from previously published sources,
save for Lubukusu, which is often produced by the author through
native-speaker introspection. The data presented shows how reflexive
and reciprocal patterns both resemble and differ from each other in
terms of the form that the anaphoric marker takes, where the anaphoric
marker occurs (i.e. its distribution), as well as what can serve as
the antecedent (i.e. referential dependence). The chapter ends with
four carefully formulated statements (three typological and one
associated with form, distribution, and antecendent selection) about
pattens seen in the data.
The objective of Chapter 5, "A parametric approach to negation in
Bantu languages" (Rozenn Guérois, Hannah Gibson, and Lutz Marten), is
to survey different negation patterns in Bantu along three dimensions:
1) negation strategy, 2) position of negators, and 3) number of
negators. These dimensions are then explored across two "tenses"
(independent and dependent), and relativised verbs (p.105). The study
employed the full sample available in the Bantu Morphosyntactic
Database (Marten et al. 2018), which covers 76 languages with at least
two from each of Guthrie's geographic zones and all five of the
genetic groups identified in Grollemund et al. (2015) (though with a
bias toward languages from the eastern group). Occasioanl gaps in data
within the sample are present: for example Luyia (JE32) [luy] does not
have sufficient data to answer the question P051 "Is negation in
relative clauses expressed in the same way as in another clause
type?", and that value therefore remains blank. Because of these gaps,
the sample size for some questions is reduced to 46 languages.
Virtually all of the data is from previously published sources, except
for some which is from unpublished fieldnotes. Each chosen dimension
(negation strategy, position of negation markers, number of negation
markers, and negation in relative clauses) is addressed in a dedicated
subsection, each treating a single parameter or group of parameters
and each displaying tables and maps indicating distribution of the
various values. A final subsection presents overall findings and
conclusions, highlighting how the results here differ from or further
support existing studies which employed different methods. It also
takes care to restate the work's inherent limitations, while
underscoring its potential for generating useful hypotheses. An
appendix follows, listing how each language was valued for each
parameter, as well as the data source.
Chapter 6, "Existential constructions in Bantu languages" (Rasmus
Bernander, Maud Devos, and Hannah Gibson), "proposes a detailed
typology of existential constructions in Bantu languages [... and...]
identifies some possible pathways of change [...]" (p.151-152). The
chapter employs a sample of 100 Bantu languages representing a broad
geographical distribution. A table (which should probably have been
named an appendix for consistency across the volume) is given, listing
how each of the languages of the sample were valued for each of the
identified existential strategies, along with the source of the data.
Of the data sources, approximately 87% comes from previously-published
sources, with the remaining 13% coming from personal communication
with other researchers or unpublished fieldnotes. Following a brief
discussion on locative agreement and the use of a copula as frequent
characteristics in Bantu existential constrictions, comment is made on
non-dedicated existential constructions: a common way of conveying
existential meanings in Bantu languages by means of a plain
existential, perhaps with a change in word order. Dedicated
existential constructions are divided into three types – locative
existentials, possessive-locative existentials, and comitative
existentials – with careful description and examples. A discussion
taking into account the diversity identified, and fitting it into
historical cycles of change follows. A subsection on negative
existentials precedes the conclusion.
Chapter 7, "Predicative possession in Bantu languages" (Denis
Creissels), sets itself the task of comparing predicative possession
constructions in Bantu to those present in the languages of the world,
with a particular focus on other language groups of Sub-Saharan
Africa, and features a discussion on the evolution of transitive verbs
of possession within Bantu (p.184). The data employed in this chapter
includes languages around the world, and a good spread of non-Bantu
African languages is provided in §7.3. §7.4, which focuses on Bantu
languages, features data from Lingala (C30B) [lin], Mongo (C61) [lol],
Swahili, Bemba, Eton (A71) [eto], Tonga (M64) [toi] (that is, Zambian
Tonga, and not the Malawian language of the same name (N15) [tog]),
Cuwabo (P34) [chw], Tswana (S31) [tsn], Southern Sotho (S33) [sot],
and Lozi (K20) [loz]. Data from Mongo, Swahili, Eton, Tonga, Cuwabo,
Southern Sotho, and Lozi comes from previously-published sources,
whereas data from Bemba comes from personal communication with another
researcher, and data from Lingala and Tswana comes from unpublished
fieldnotes. Following an introduction of five types of predicative
possession across the languages of the world (have possessive, incorp
possessive, comit possessive, exist possessive with genitive coding,
and exist possessive with oblique coding of the possessor), a short
subsection shows how these five types are distributed across the
languages (including the non-Bantu languages) of Africa south of the
Sahara (the incorp possessive and the exist possessive with genitive
coding are rare, while the have possessive, the comit possessive, and
the exist possessive with oblique coding of the possessor are
wiespread). It is shown in the following subsection that, of the three
types common in Africa south of the Sahara, two (the have possessive
and the commit possessive) are attested in Bantu, with the comit
possessive predominant. The remainder of the subsection carefully
analyses the comit possessive type, returning to cases of the have
possessive type that do not show evidence of having diachronically
developed from a comit possessive type. Unclear or intermediate cases
are examined at the end of the subsection. The following subsection
treats cases of historical reanalysis of comit possessive
constructions, and the subsection after that considers the data from
South-Tswana which presents a particular challenge to the historical
tendencies hitherto described.
Part II. Areal and Micro-Level Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu
The second part gathers eight chapters whose scope includes languages
from a single geographical area, or languages which are genetically
closely-related.
Chapter 8, "The use of the augment in Nguni languages: a marker of
referentiality?" (Eva-Marie Bloom Ström and Matti Miestamo), aims to
treat  the connection between the augment and (non-) referentiality in
the Nguni subgroup of Bantu (p.216). The study employs data from Swati
(S43) [ssw], Xhosa (S41) [xho], Zulu (S42) [zul], and Southern Ndebele
(S407) [nbl]. Data from Zulu and Swati comes from previously-published
sources, whereas data from Xhosa is described as being from fieldwork
which has been organised into a corpus of transcribed discourse, and
the Southern Ndebele are primarly from fieldnotes. Through examining
phrases which are generally well-described within an
information-structural and pragmatic context, it is concluded that the
current distribution of the augment in these languages represents an
earlier system in which the augment was used to mark referentiality,
and the absence of the augment represented non-referentiality.
Chapter 9, "Micro-variation in the nominal class marking systems of
Malawian languages" (Atikonda Mtenje-Mkochi), "[examines]
micro-variation in nominal class-marking systems of six Malawian
languages, using selected parameters developed by Guérois et al.
(2017)" (p.243). The data used comes from Cicewa (N30) [nya],
Citumbuka (N21) [tum], Cisena (N441) [swk], Ciyao, Cindali (M301)
[ndh], and Cinyiha (M23) [nyr], and is a combination of material from
published sources, and the author's unpublished fieldnotes. Some of
the data used was derived from varieties of the language spoken
outside of Malawi, including  data for Cinyiha, Ciyao, and Cindali.
Eight descriptive questions (e.g. "1. What is the shape of the
augment?"; "3. What is the shape of the class 5 nominal prefix?) are
examined. A meaningful organisation of the resulting data is then
attempted using the parameters developed in Guérois et al (2017). It
is concluded that these parameter values (developed for a Bantu-wide
survey), do not capture important differences, and a series of
finer-grained distinctions in order to deal with the Malawi-specific
data is proposed. The similarities in the data are used to argue that
Malawi forms a linguistic area, seemingly in the technical sense of
the term.
Chapter 10, "Locatives in Runyankore-Rukiga" (Dorothee Beermann and
Allen Asiimwe), sets out to present the range of locative words and
phrases in Runyankore-Rukiga, as well as to discuss their categorial
status and agreement properties (pp.273-275). Data from these two
languages – Runyankore (JE13) [nyn] and Rukiga (JE14) [cgg] – is made
available in parsed and glossed format via an openly downloadable xml
file, and much of this comes from oral narratives, newspaper texts,
and a novel. The material is analysed morphologically, as well as
through a formal framework described as "Jackendovian semantic
representation combined with a unification-based feature account" (p.
287). Among other observations, it is concluded that locative words
and phrases in Runyankore and Rukiga are nominal, and that locative
phrases which allow agreement alternation (i.e. a demonstrative
agreeing in class with its head noun or agreeing with the locative
marker) are part of a single agreement domain. Throughout the chapter,
it is not distinguished which examples are from Runyankore and which
are from Rukiga.
The stated objective of Chapter 11, "Morphosyntactic properties of
object marking in Nyakyusa" (Amani Lusekelo), is to treat the
phenomenon of mandatory object marking and how this depends on the
inherent semantic value of individual verbs (p.291). Employing
existing data from the language of interest, Nyakyusa (M31) [nyy], as
well as the author's native-speaker introspection, the chapter
presents a wealth of sentence-level examples. Principal arguments are
that Nyakyusa is a symmetrical language (i.e. a Bantu language which,
in multiple-object constructions, allows either of the objects in
verb-adjacent position), but that care must be taken in this process
because some verbs in Nyakyusa require object prefixes, whereas other
verbs take object prefixes optionally. That this pattern is more
widespread than Nyakyusa is mentioned throughout, as well as supported
through the presentation of some data from Luguru (G35) [ruf]. Though
this chapter says that it occasionally relies on previously published
data for Nyakyusa, and it certainly relies on previously published
data for Luguru, no page references for examples are supplied.
Chapter 12, "Multiple-reciprocity marking in the Kikongo Language
Cluster: Functional distribution and origins" (Sebastian Dom, Heidi
Goes, and Koen Bostoen), aims to clarify how, in the languages of the
Kikongo Language Cluster, simplex and complex suffixes are
semantically different, to reconstruct the original morphemes, as well
as to explicate the diachronic development of the complex suffixes
(p.317). The chapter employs data from existing published sources, as
well as fieldwork data from one of the authors from across Kikongo
varieties, with the subsection focused on multiple logistic regression
analysis (MLRA) (§12.2) treating a smaller subset of four Kikongo
varieties. Aside from MLRA, data is compared and historical methods of
reconstruction based on regular sound changes are applied. A
Proto-Kikongo reconstruction (both semantic and formal) of the complex
reciprocal marker is offered: *-izyan, which most likely originated to
mark reciprocity of causation and widened to mean reciprocity in
general. The chapter argues that the semantic distinction between
prototypical reciprocal events (representing a symmetrical relation
between otherwise asymmetrical events – such as "the boys hit each
other") and natural reciprocal events (representing events which are
inherently symmetrical – such as "the boys met (each other)") plays a
role in the use of the short reciprocal marker versus the long
reciprocal marker, and that the short reciprocal marker is employed in
many varieties of Kikongo with a wider middle set of meanings.
The goal that Chapter 13, "Reflexive-reciprocal polysemy in
South-Western Bantu: Distribution, typology, and origins" (Koen
Bostoen), sets for itself is to 1) lay out how reflexive-reciprocal
polysemy is distributed in South-Western Bantu, 2) conduct a
comparative analysis of the data, based on the typology of Maslova
(2008), and 3) reconstruct the origins of the phenomenon and discuss
how it spread. A detailed analysis of the reflexive-reciprocal
polysemy in Kwamashi (K34) [mho], based on the author's unpublished
field notes, is provided as an in-depth examination of the phenomenon,
followed by a comparative review of previously-published data on nine
subgroups of South-Western Bantu. Finally, a historical pathway of
change for this group is proposed from reflexive to reciprocal to
middle.
Chapter 14, "Morphosyntactic and semantic variation of the persistive
aspect in Lake Tanganyika Bantu: a focus on Bende" (Yuko Abe), was
written to "investigate the reflexes of *kɪ́ around Lake Tanganyika
and to uncover the extended semantics of *kɪ́" (p.370). The data
employed is from previously-published sources for Fuliiru (JD63)
[flr], Rundi (JD62) [run], Ha, Holoholo (D28) [hoo], and Lungu (M14)
[mgr], and a mix of previously-published material and the author's
unpublished fieldnotes for Bembe (D54) [bmb], Bende (F12) [bdp],
Taabwa (M41) [tap], and Fipa. Beginning by introducing a
grammaticalisation scenario for *kɪ́ developed in Güldemann (1998),
the remainder of the chapter examines the synchronic patterns attested
in the languages of the sample. Data from Bende is treated as a case
study, and then data from the eight other languages was treated
comparatively. The chapter concludes by reviewing which languages are
at which stage along the stages of grammaticalisation in Güldemann
(1998), outlining geographical clustering, as well as comparing how
similar the languages are in relation to each other based on the
formal and distributional characteristics of *kɪ́.
The stated aim of Chapter 15: "A micro-parametric approach to focus
marking ní in Kilimanjaro Bantu languages: with special reference to
Rombo-Mkuu and Uru" (Daisuke Shinagawa), is "to provide a
micro-parametric analysis of the copulative identificational marker ní
in Rombo-Mkuu (E623C) [rof] and Uru (E622D) [old]" (p.387). The source
of the uncited data is not given in the chapter, but given the resumé
of the author (e.g. Shinagawa (2014), Shinagawa (2024)), it is assumed
that all of the data is based on unpublished fieldnotes. Following a
review of the formal and functional properties of ní in Rombo-Mkuu and
Uru, a series of two phonological and six morphological parameters are
posited in order to sufficiently describe the micro-variation. Each of
these parameters is examined in a dedicated subsection. A useful
summary recapitulates the conclusions of each subsection, allowing for
easy comparison, and the conclusion, in addition to reviewing the
contrast between the two languages, outlines next steps in analysis as
well as what is empirically required to do so.
References
The references section spans more than 30 pages of works used
throughout the volume.
Subject Index
The subject index is two pages, and focuses mainly on phenomena that
typologists may be interested in.
Language Index
The language index includes over 70 Bantu languages (as well as
Bantu-adjacent languages such as Bafut and Fe'efe'e) named in the
text.
EVALUATION
I will begin this section with a critical discussion of three topics
in some detail: one theoretical (parameters), one editorial (coherence
of the volume), and one empirical (the data). I will then conclude.
Parameters: Three of the four editors of this volume (Marten, Guérois,
and Gibson) have conducted pioneering work refining
(surface-)parametric (see above) approaches to morphosyntax in Bantu
(e.g. Guérois et al. 2017), and it is therefore unsurprising to see
clearly parametric approaches in slightly more than half of the
chapters. This approach, however, has come under valid criticism, with
Van de Velde (2023) most prominently raising the central issue that
the parametric approach is essentially a reductive one, and proposing
several alternate approaches that he argues are superior. Kerr
(2025:3) points out that, because of the lag-time between the actual
writing of these chapters and the publication of this volume, it looks
as if Van de Velde (2023) has been disregarded here when this is
almost certainly not the case. With that said, she also points out
that previous to Van de Velde (2023) explicitly treating comparative
Bantu, the issue is well-discussed in wider typological literature,
and that she would have appreciated some further reflection on this.
Personally, I have found Guérois et al.'s (2017) list of Bantu
morphosyntactic parameters an extremely useful tool for constructing
questions for grammatical elicitation with Ihanzu (F31B) [isn] – the
Bantu language community with which I work (Harvey 2019). With that
said, I have also encountered limitations when proceeding to use
parameters analytically, and I very much look forward to what emerges
from the discussion highlighted here.
Coherence of the Volume: as mentioned, the coverage and variety in
this volume is immense, and even within the subfield of Bantu
linguistics exist additional sub-subfields, each with their own
methods of analysing and conventions for presenting data. I feel there
could have been more done throughout to pull the individual chapters
together. One example, minor but perhaps illustrative, is the quality
of maps throughout: some maps contain a scale and a compass rose (Maps
1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 9.1), the rest do not; some feature a legend (Maps 1.1,
1.2, 2.1, 5.1-5.7, 9.1, 12.1, 13.1), the rest do not. All chapter
authors would benefit from consulting Gawne and Ring (2016) to improve
the quality of their maps, but having some established editorial
standard here would have helped. It also seems that the chapters are
not in conversation with each other, even when their topics are highly
similar. For example, among the three chapters dealing with (reflexive
and) reciprocals in the volume – 1) Sikuku; 2) Dom, Goes, and Bostoen;
and 3) Bostoen – Sikuku makes one passing reference to each, Dom et
al. makes reference to Bostoen (a coauthor) but no reference to
Sikuku, and Bostoen makes reference to the work he co-authors with Dom
and Goes, but not to Sikuku. There seems to be a lost opportunity here
– one that is repeated across the volume. Perhaps more seriously,
authors are occasionally using the same terms to describe very
different things: Kerr (2025:7) has already noted that Sikuku's
definition of a Bantu language is different from that given in the
volume introduction (Marten, Guérois, Gibson, Bloom Ström), but
Sikuku's definition of a parameter also seems quite different. Where
the rest of the volume takes the (surface-)parameter definition given
above, Sikuku's observations (pp.102-103) are correlational statements
and implicational hierarchies – rather more akin to (though not the
same as) what have been described as deep-parameters in the volume
introduction. With that said, Sikuku's chapter is an excellent
contribution, its only demerit being that it was not more integrated
into the volume at hand.
The Data: When we do linguistic analysis, we must strive to make it
reproducible. That is, "the data on which publications are based are
made available so that other scientists could ostensibly verify the
results for themselves" (Gawne and Berez-Kroeker 2018:23). Writing
from a documentary linguistic perspective, this work goes on to
establish a baseline of data stewardship for reproducibility, which is
worth reading in full but which I will quote in part here: "Where the
data are not sensitive or controversial, they should be made
accessible to both the language speakers and to researchers who wish
to confirm existing analyses, test new analyses or explore previously
under-described phenomena in the language. Descriptive work should
clearly state the research methods used in collecting the data that
forms the basis of the research, make clear where the data are located
and should explicitly link each piece of data to its place in the
documentation data" (ibid. p.29). If we take Gawne and Berez-Kroeker's
definition of data as recordings of natural or elicited speech,
virtually none of the analysis in this book is reproducible. This is,
of course, an unfair criticism to place at the feet of the current
volume alone – the majority of Bantu linguistic, African linguistic,
and general linguistic scholarship today is not reproducible. I make
this observation only because the volume at hand represents some of
the best work in the subfield and can therefore be pushed to improve.
Perhaps the best model in this volume is the chapter by Beermann and
Asiimwe, which provides a sample of the parsed and glossed texts from
which their examples derive in a downloadable xml format. With that
said, they state that the analysis is "informed by an open-ended
corpus" (p.275), not that all of the examples come from that corpus,
and I cannot tell whether the xml file corresponds to all of the
examples used in-text or not. Additionally, none of the examples gives
a reference to where exactly in the corpus one may find it. As such,
Beermann and Asiimwe's approach represents a good start, but there
remains room for improvement. Bloom Ström and Miestamo's chapter, when
referring to data from their corpora, does employ informative locator
information, including not just where one may find it, but also
whether the information is dialogue, monologue, or oral tradition
(p.219 fn.6). Unfortunately, none of the corpus material is openly
accessible and therefore these locators can, at best, only serve as
bookkeeping devices for the authors. For the remainder of the data
used in this volume, the examples are not linked to any natural or
elicited speech data. This is because, for many Bantu languages, the
best extant source may simply be isolated example sentences in a
descriptive grammar or the like. That is, linking to speech data is
impossible. As such, if authors wish to make use of this kind of
material, simply repeating it and citing the page number on which it
was found is the best they can do. Finally, a significant amount of
data is unpublished, and cited only as "author's field notes" or
"personal communication" with another researcher. This practice is
arguably the worst, in that unpublished data or communication with
colleagues essentially means that, on top of years of specialist
training, Bantuists who hope to access the same sorts of resources
used in these papers will have to also be familiar with the informal
and invisible networks of the people with the data, and to be able to
navigate them. In my experience, the vast majority of Bantuists would
share their data, and I am certain that the authors in this volume
would gladly do the same, but the issue is not an interpersonal one,
but a structural one. Systemically, this is not inclusive, and needs
to change. In the recent past, such a call for archiving all research
data would have been seen as disadvantaging colleagues in the Global
South – after all, creating archival deposits of natural speech (e.g.
Griscom and Harvey 2020) requires considerable funding – but with the
emergence of free, robust alternatives like Zenodo, making data
available in small batches with "good enough" metadata (e.g. Malleyeck
and Harvey 2021) is an option for everyone.
With the exception of a small number of languages including Ndamba,
Nyakyusa, Sena, Swahili, and Tumbuka, the vast majority of Bantu
languages employ phonemic tone. I did not conduct an exhaustive check,
but a number of tonal languages are represented without tone-marking
in this volume. Kerewe and Namwanga employ phonemic tone (e.g. Odden
2014 and Bickmore 2000, respectively), but this is not marked in
Chapter 3. Swati, Xhosa, Zulu, and Southern Ndebele employ phonemic
tone (e.g. Bradshaw 2003, Cassimjee 1998, Silverman 2000, Aunio et al.
2019, respectively), but this is not marked in Chapter 8. Runyankore
and Rukiga employ phonemic tone, but this is not marked in Chapter 10
– the authors here admit this in fn7, which is at the very least
useful information about the limitations of the data. The argument may
be made that tone is not relevant to the examinations at hand, but
even if this is true, the descriptions furnished are poorer for the
omission.
Conclusion: In this review, I have twice used the image of the
kaleidoscope to describe morphosyntactic variation in Bantu. The image
is used advisedly: just as the visual effect of the kaleidoscope is
characterised by repeating forms, dynamic change, and infinitesimal
detail, so too is the study of Bantu languages. Insofar as the volume
is meant to be an overview, it certainly succeeds not only in covering
a respectable breadth of languages from the Bantu family, but also in
illustrating what working with Bantu language data is like. The
individual chapters vary considerably, and bringing all of these
varied works together is a tall order, but the reader looking for the
state-of-the-art (states-of-the-art?) will be rewarded.
Errata: p.12 ln. 17: "Terarmura" for "Teramura"; p.15 ln. 13 "objects
markers" for "object markers"; p. 16 ln. 37 unitalicised ní; p.59 ln.
19 "and the is examined" for "and the amba-less relative is examined";
Ch.4 (passim.) "Few" for "Fwe"; p.73 ln. 3 "construcional" for
"constructional"; p.85 ln.13 "orreciprocal" for "or reciprocal;" p.125
example (19a) has an incorrect free translation in the fourth line of
the interlinearisation; p.126 Map 5.5 Ndamba is given a value 6, but
the meaning of value 6 is not indicated in the key; p.162-163 example
(23) is interrupted by a page break; p.163 example (27) has a stray
word "strategies"; p.173 ln.29-30 "all together" for "altogether";
p.188 ln.15 "spere" for "sphere"; p.193 ln.20 "daT" for "DAT";
p.224-225 example (14) is interrupted by a page break; p.224 there is
a reference to Kortmann (2004) in-text, but in the references there is
a Kortmann 2004a and 2004b; p.246 "Ethnologue (2020)" for "Eberhard et
al. (2020)"; p.296 example (13) the second line of the
interlinearisation is missing the gloss for the OM8 object prefix;
p.345 ln. 24 reference to example (2a) should be to example (2c);
p.388 fn.4 "ǎ" should be "á" for HT
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ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Andrew HARVEY is Junior Professor of African Languages and the
Construction of Knowledge at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He
is interested in the languages of the Tanzanian rift, their
documentation and description, their morphosyntax, as well as the
histories and cultures of their speaker communities, especially as
evinced through language contact and linguistic arts.



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