Chapter 10 Tense and aspect marking in Bantu languages of the Morogoro region, Tanzania Malin Petzell a & Peter Edelsten b a University of Gothenburg b SOAS University of London A review of the verbal morphology of several Bantu languages of the Morogoro re- gion, Tanzania, reveals surprising diversity in both their distribution and meaning. Bantu languages are renowned for their rich verbal morphology, including remote- ness distinctions in the tenses. However, some Bantu languages of the region have essentially only two tenses (past and non-past), limited aspectual distinctions, and some have no negative tense/aspect markers. This chapter summarises our current knowledge of the tense/aspect systems of fve Bantu languages of the Morogoro region: Kagulu (G12), Luguru (G35), Kami (G36), Ndamba (G52) and Pogoro (G51). In particular, the chapter reviews the distribution and meaning of these morpho- logical distinctions, the abundance versus scarcity of specifc tense/aspect markers, and the methods of expressing negation. 1 Introduction 1.1 Background This chapter provides an analysis of the tense/aspect systems of fve selected Bantu languages of the Morogoro region, Tanzania. The Morogoro region spreads from the area north of Morogoro town to the southern part of the Kilombero val- ley. Tanzania has about 100 Bantu languages (Maho & Sands 2002), most of them being poorly documented. Of the 100 Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania, 10 are spoken mainly in the Morogoro region: Malin Petzell & Peter Edelsten. 2024. Tense and aspect marking in Bantu languages of the Morogoro region, Tanzania. In Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, Gastor Mapunda & Lutz Marten (eds.), Morphosyntactic variation in East African Bantu languages: Descriptive and comparative approaches, 277–321. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10663779