Afroasiatic languages are spoken by some 300 million people in Northern, Central and Eastern Africa and the Middle East. This book is the first typological study of these languages, which are comprised of around 375 living and extinct varieties. They are an important object of study because of their typological diversity in the areas of phonology (some have tone; others do not), morphology (some have extensive inflectional systems; others do not), position of the verb in the clause (some are verb-initial, some are verb-medial, and some are verb-final) and in the semantic functions they encode. This book documents this typological diversity and the typological similarities across the languages and includes information on endangered and little-known languages. Requiring no previous knowledge of the specific language families, it will be welcomed by linguists interested in linguistic theory, typology, historical linguistics and endangered languages, as well as scholars of Africa and the Middle East.

'Formerly dominated by research on historical reconstruction, this volume provides a new perspective on Afroasiatic by focusing on the typological wealth characterising this phylum.' Bernd Heine, University of Cologne
'This volume is a wonderfully comprehensive and yet entirely accessible compilation of where we stand today in the study of Afroasiatic, one the world's most important established deep-time language families.' Chris Ehret, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
'This is an excellent survey of a large and under-studied group of languages. It contains a wealth of material that will be of interest to linguists generally, not just to specialists in its area … an admirable addition to the linguistic literature.' Geoffrey Sampson, The Linguist List

Zygmunt Frajzyngier is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Erin Shay is a Research Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.