ABSTRACT
Totela (K41) is a highly endangered Bantu language spoken (in strikingly different varieties) in parts of northeastern Namibia and western Zambia. This chapter focuses primarily on the description of the Zambian variety, while also pointing out significant areas of divergence between Namibian and Zambian Totela. It gives a general overview of Totela’s linguistic features, with special emphases on its unusual system of anticipatory tone shift and on the complex lexicon – grammar interactions between lexical aspectual types and morphosyntactic expressions of tense and aspect.
