This groundbreaking study addresses all grammatical levels of Kifuliiru, a Bantu J language of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Together with its companion volume (The Kifuliiru Language: Volume 1: Tone, Phonology, and Morphological Derivation), this is one of the most thorough Bantu grammars available, aiming to describe all grammatical features found in over 100 narrative texts, and to provide natural examples. At the word level, this book covers nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, demonstratives, locatives, ideophones and interjections. The chapter on verbs catalogues the extremely wide range of tenses, aspects, and moods. There is a comprehensive chapter on reduplication, and another on proverbs. At the clause level, information structure is carefully presented, including possible alternations of the default clause word order. A complete set of distinct interclausal relations is also laid out. Of particular interest is a detailed study of narrative discourse, an area that most Bantu grammars to date do not cover. This study includes a fascinating section on tight-knit conversations. Also noted are various development markers, which demarcate two distinct levels of thematic salience. Intonation and pauses are also described, including a typical long pause between topic and comment. Many of the discourse features described in this book are common to Bantu languages, and thus this volume invites invite further comparative study. The contents of this book have already provided a springboard for extensive discourse study in dozens of related languages. Roger Van Otterloo received his Masters Degree in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1976. He and his wife Karen (author of Volume 1) have worked with SIL among the Kifuliiru-speaking community since 1980, living in their communities from 1980-1996.

This volume on Kifuliiru, together with its companion volume (The Kifuliiru Language: Volume 2: A Descriptive Grammar), is one of the most thorough and yet most 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 (O). 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.