For the thirty third consecutive year, the Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) has provided the major forum for the discussion of linguistic data geared towards understanding how African languages are constituted, acquired, and used. This volume represents a selection of 25 peer-reviewed papers from the 33rd ACAL held in March 2002 at Ohio University in Athens. The papers cover language acquisition, syntax, phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical linguistics, as well as language use and function in Africa making proposals concerning the proper analysis and representation of linguistic information.