Laura J. Downing and Al Mtenje (2018). The phonology of Chichewa. (The Phonology of the World's Languages.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xvi+294.

Abstract

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the phonology of the Chichewa language, a Bantu language, as it is spoken in Malawi.* The book is the second in the Phonology of the World's Languages series on a Bantu language, the first being on Kimatuumbi, spoken in Tanzania (Odden 1996). Downing & Mtenje (the second author is a native speaker of Chichewa) provide broad coverage of phonological phenomena typical of Bantu languages, and African languages more generally. The book contains extensive data from Chichewa, and is written overall in a very accessible style, so as to be useful not only to specialists working on African languages, but also to students and other researchers interested in understanding Bantu phonology and its place in phonological typology. The authors themselves indicate that the book is meant to provide a relatively 'theory-neutral' account of the phonology of Chichewa; as I will demonstrate throughout this review, there is considerable variation in the amount of theory discussed from chapter to chapter, as well as how committed the authors are to particular theoretical models.