ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 is an overview of the expression of aspect, tense and mood. It describes the formal means of expressing aspect and tense (aspect is considered more fundamental than tense) and gives a quantified overview of the aspectual and temporal categories encountered in the Bantu area. The account is based on an analysis of over 200 languages from across the entire Bantu area. The section on mood is the first overview of its kind, and therefore less wide in scope. It describes the main (verbal) means of expressing optatives, directive speech acts and modal notions of possibility and necessity.
