§6. Introductory. In morphology, the Chewa language conforms quite rigidly to the general Bantu pattern. It illustrates the typically synthetic language of agglutinative technique; i. e., the word is fairly elaborate in structure, with affixed elements that are loosely united to its nucleus. With the exception of the two vocalic suffixes of the verb form,1 there is hardly a single element that may be regarded as fused. The system of noun classes and concordances serving as relational elements may be said to stamp the Bantu family as a ‘simple mixed relational’ type; i. e., the relational elements may be classified as 'concrete relational· elements.2 We shall see that certain of the noun classes are more formal than semantic in application—at least in Chichewa.3 Another feature (of Chichewa at least) is the identification, very much as in English, of the relation of actor and action with that of subject and predicate.4