Clausal morphosyntax and information structure
With some 300 500 closely related languages, the Bantu family provides a wealth of examples for the study of syntactic micro variation within a set of typologically similar languages. This chapter surveys six central topics in the clausal morphosyntax, highlighting similarities and variation across the Bantu spectrum. The themes discussed are: word order, agreement in the phrase and the clause, valency changing morphosyntax, non verbal predication, complex clause structure and dependent clauses and the phonology syntax interface. Each topic is amply illustrated with data from several geographically disparate languages, and the implications of the data for leading theoretical frameworks are discussed.