Sotho nouns

Sesotho

Notes:

  • The orthography used in this and related articles is that of South Africa, not Lesotho. For a discussion of the differences between the two see the notes on Sesotho orthography.
  • Hovering the mouse cursor over most italic Sesotho text should reveal an IPA pronunciation key (excluding tones). Note that often when a section discusses formatives, affixes, or vowels it may be necessary to view the IPA to see the proper conjunctive word division and vowel qualities.

Sesotho nouns signify concrete or abstract concepts in the language, but are distinct from the Sesotho pronouns.

Bantu languages are often said to have sentences which are "centred around the noun" due to the striking nature of the noun concordance system. In Sesotho, pronouns, verbs, copulatives, adjectives, relatives, enumeratives, and possessives all need to agree with the noun(s) associated with them.

Contents


Structure

Except for class 1a (which has a "null prefix"), nouns are composed of a noun prefix[1] and a stem (which may in turn be derived from other parts of speech; see below under Derivation). Each noun belongs to one of several noun classes and the knowledge of noun classes and their concords is pivotal to composing coherent sentences.

Usually, the noun's class can be discerned by simply looking for the prefix, but there are many instances where this can become very complicated:

There are further complications caused by stems that begin with vowels when the vowels interact causing the quality and tone of the prefix vowel to change (this never happens if the stem comes from a vowel verb); in these cases it is often simply a matter of memorising the correct class and plural for each individual word.

Noun stems can range in length from monosyllabic as in motho (person), to very long stems formed either by duplication (e.g. kgodumodumo great and fearsome thing, the swallowing monster) or derived from long and complex verbs (e.g. the 7 syllable phuparollelano the act of mutual giving and receiving, derived from a verb which is in turn idiomatically and recursively — through 4 distinct steps — derived from the verb fupara to close ones hand suddenly).

Noun prefix system

Sesotho, like all other Bantu languages, uses a set of "noun classes" and each noun belongs to one of the classes. The noun class that a noun belongs to is indicated by a prefix.[2]

Nouns are divided somewhat arbitrarily between these classes, although a few of them contain nouns which mostly fall into clear categories. For example, all class 1 nouns are humans and verbal agents, most class 1a nouns are proper names and kinship terms, etc.

The noun classes and their respective prefixes are as follows:

The Sesotho noun prefix system
Class Prefix Example(s) Notes
1. mo- motho person human nouns
2. ba- batho people
1a. — ntate father mostly human nouns including nouns of kinship.
The bo- is high tone
2a. bo- bontate fathers
3. mo- monwana finger mostly non-human nouns
4. me- menwana fingers
5. le- letsatsi day/sun both human and non-human
6. ma- matsatsi days
7. se- sephiri secret human and non-human
8. di- diphiri secrets
9. [N]- ntho thing miscellaneous
thapelo prayer
10. di[N]- dintho things
dithapelo prayers
14. bo- bohobe bread abstract nouns belong here,
therefore most class 14 words have no plural
bobe ugliness
15. ho- ho tsamaya to go infinitives and gerunds belong here
16. fa- fatshe down this is the only word in this class
17. ho- hole far away
hosane tomorrow
18. mo- moraho behind
mose overseas/river-bank

Notes:

  1. [N] means that nasalization will occur to the following consonant.
  2. Many class 5 words in Sesotho come from the original Proto-Bantu *du- class 11, whose plural is class 10 *dîN-, which is why some class 5 nouns may have two distinct plurals: one in class 6, and one in class 10. However, the di[N]- plural does not apply to all class 5 words, and when it does the meaning might be changed slightly (maleme (tongues), diteme (flattery)). For example, Setswana uses lorato for Sesotho lerato (love), as this class still exists in the language.
  3. Classes 16, 17, and 18 are the locative classes. They are no longer productive in Sesotho (they cannot accept new nouns) but they are productive in many other Bantu languages.
  4. Noun Classes 11 to 13, and 19 to 23 do not occur in Sesotho, but do occur in other Bantu languages (isiZulu has class 11, Silozi has Classes 11, 12, and 13, etc.).

Each basic noun in Sesotho has an inherent prefix (even if that prefix is a null prefix: segmentally empty). The speaker's mental lexicon includes the entire word, including the class prefix, which is usually enough to determine the class and therefore the concords as well.

sefate (tree) has prefix se-, which is of class 7, therefore its plural must be difate

Up until class 10, the plural class for class n is class n + 1 (where n is odd).[3] Most languages have these first ten classes, though there are many where some of the classes 1 to 10 are missing.

Though class membership is ultimately determined by morphology (the class prefix and the noun's concords) and not semantics, it is obvious from comparing the class contents of various languages that there are some tentative semantic trends. The strongest trend (which is basically a rule) is that all class 1 nouns are human, and non-human nouns that begin with the mo- prefix are therefore in class 3 (in fact, there are no human class 3 nouns in Sesotho). In many other languages, however, class 1 contains "animate" nouns, and may therefore also contain some non-human nouns.

Motswalle (friend), in class 1, has an irregular plural in class 4 — metswalle. Also, morena (king), has a plural in class 6. Many class 1 words have a tendency of misbehaving, but we know that they belong to class 1 because of their concords. Quite a substantial number of class 1 words have their plurals in class 6.

All these irregularities with the plurals naturally lead to a system where each class is treated as a separate gender, instead of alternatives where the first twelve classes are grouped into six genders.

Often, when the prefix of a noun whose stem begins with a vowel (and is not derived from a vowel verb stem) is obscured by various phonological processes, prefix compounding may occur (instead of the usual prefix substitution) when forming plurals, or even in the singular itself. Some words may even end up in a different class

jwang (grass) in class 14 is often heard as bojwang and has plural majwang, both instances of prefix compounding since the jwa- is the palatalized class 14 prefix bo-.
ngwetsi (daughter-in-law) was originally a class 1 word, whose prefix is velarized and is now treated as a class 9 noun with plural dingwetsi. In Setswana, however, it is still treated as a class 1 noun with plural betsi

In idiomatic speech, the le- of class 5, the se- of class 7, and the di- of classes 8 and 10 are sometimes not rendered when the noun is followed by the appropriate concords.[4] Some historical words, such as letsie (locust), have completely lost their singular prefixes (and, in the case of tsie, ended up in class 9). Others, such as lelapa (family/home) are often rendered without the prefix even when not followed by any prefixes ("at my/the home" is always lapeng). The class 5 noun isao (next year) has completely lost its prefix, and has plural maisao.

Class contents

What follows is a brief outline of the contents and functionings of the various classes.

Concords

Main article: Sesotho concords

Every part of speech in Sesotho which is somehow connected with a noun (either by qualifying it, associating it with an action or state, or standing in its place in an utterance) needs to be brought into agreement with the noun. This is done by a set of concords whose forms loosely resemble the noun prefixes. The concords are attached to the front of the parts of speech and result in utterances which sound mildly alliterative.

Tones

Main article: Sesotho tonology

Except for class 2a, the prefixes of the non-locative classes are null ("low") toned, while the set of possible tone patterns for the stem is large and obviously dependent on its length.

When certain high toned formatives (the conjunctive le-, the locative ho-, the possessive concord, and the subjectival concord for noun classes when forming positive copulatives) are prefixed to a noun with tonal pattern [ _ _ ] for the first two syllables including the noun prefix, the noun prefix's tone becomes high giving pattern [ ¯ ¯ _ ]. This does not happen if the second syllable of the noun is high. With monosyllabic stems the tone of the stem is raised as well.

morena [ _ _ _ ] king ⇒ wa morena [ ¯ ¯ _ _ ] of (class 1 or 3 possessive concord) the king, le morena [ ¯ ¯ _ _ ] and the king
motse [ _ _ ] village ⇒ ho motse [ ¯ ¯ ¯ ] to the village

Derivation

In the Bantu languages, nouns form an open class with new nouns regularly and actively being created from nouns and other parts of speech through predictable methods.

From nouns

Many nouns can be derived from other nouns, usually through the use of suffixes.

From qualificatives

Qualificatives can be used to derive abstract nouns in class 14 by prefixing bo-.

Adjective -ngata many ⇒ bongata quantity
Relative -thata hard ⇒ bothata difficulty
Enumerative -sele other ⇒ bosele difference/otherness

From ideophones

Some nouns are irregularly (and often idiomatically) derived from ideophones by reduplication:

metle of striking ⇒ semetle-metle big news

From verbs

Nouns of most classes are very actively and regularly derived from verbs. What follows is only a brief and incomplete overview.

-rata love, desire ⇒

  1. morati (and class 2 plural) lover
  2. lerato (and class 6 plural) love
  3. serati (and class 7 plural) lover
  4. thato (and class 10 plural) desire, will
  5. borati state of one who loves
  6. ho rata to love, desire; loving, desiring

Note that:

Generally, agents are formed in classes 1 and 7 by adding the prefix and changing the final vowel to i, while impersonal nouns are formed in several classes by adding the prefix and changing the final vowel to o:

-rua be/come rich, own/breed livestock ⇒ class 1 morui rich person, and class 3 moruo wealth

There are, however, some impersonal nouns which end with i. Even if they begin with the ambiguous class prefix mo-, nouns denoting non-human entities cannot be in class 1.

-ela flow ⇒ moela stream, and moedi waterway (both in class 3)

Agents derived from passive verbs often use the full passive suffix -uwa, and never change the final vowel:

-rata love ⇒ -ratuwa / -ratwa be loved ⇒ moratuwa beloved

Compound nouns

A rich source of nouns are nominal compounds formed (somewhat irregularly) from other parts of speech and even complete sentences. Note that the use of dashes to separate their parts is also irregular and usually based on the popularity and utility of the noun, and the Lesotho and South African orthographies tend to differ (with the Lesotho orthography tending to prefer dashes more).

bohlanya ba pere horse madness ⇒ bohlanya-ba-pere Aristida Burkei grass
ho ja ditlhapi to eat fish (traditionally considered taboo) ⇒ Mojatlhapi English person (derisive)
ho dula setulo to sit (in) a chair ⇒ modulasetulo chairperson
ho ya le moya to be carried by (go with) the wind ⇒ seyalemoya radio receiver
ke a tseba I know ⇒ class 2a bokeatseba doctors
leemedi pronoun (-ema stand ⇒ -emela stand for) + qho! ideophone of being absolute/certain ⇒ lemediqho absolute pronoun

As in many other languages, compounds indicating possession (genitive compounds) may be formed by following the possessee with the possessor ("X of Y" become "X-Y" — the English equivalent is "Y's X" or "Y-X"). This may also be done with the descriptive possessive.

molao law + motheo foundation ⇒ molao wa motheo founding law ⇒ molaotheo constitution
sesiu grain basket + lesedi sunshine/data ⇒ sesiu-sedi database

Foreign (non-Bantu nor Khoisan) acquisitions

Many Sesotho nouns (and other parts of speech) stem from contact with speakers of Indo-European languages, primarily French missionaries, Orange Free State Afrikaners, and, in modern times, English people. The very alien phonetics and phonologies of these languages mean that words are to be imported rather irregularly with varying phonetic transformations.

French bonbon ⇒ dipompong sweets
English "heathen" ⇒ class 1 mohetene
Afrikaans "Boer" ⇒ class 5 Leburu Afrikaner
English "teacher" ⇒ class 9 titjhere male teacher (note that the English "silent r" is rendered)
Afrikaans "venster" window (cf Latin fenestra) ⇒ class 9 festere (note the consonant cluster)
English "speaker" ⇒ class 7 spikara loudspeaker (with class 8 plural dipikara as if the cluster "sp" was a contraction of sep-)

Notes

  1. ^ It is interesting to note that the Sotho–Tswana languages lack the high toned pre-prefix/augment that appears in the nouns of many other languages. Generally, the augments harmonise with the (inherent) vowel in the prefix (e.g. class 1 *ú-mu-, class 2 *á-ba-, class 4 *í-mi-, class 9 *í-N- etc.) though there are some languages in which the vowel of the augment is weakened (lowered), thus resulting in forms such as class 1 ó-mu-, class 2 á-ba-, class 4 é-mi-, class 9 é-N- etc.

    Note that, at least in the isiZulu, the augments of classes 1a and 2a are ú- and á- respectively, suggesting that the class 1a and 2a prefixes have the exact same inherent vowels as classes 1 and 2.

  2. ^ It is possible that in some pre-Proto-Bantu language, the prefixes where full words which became shortened and cliticised (though it is also quite possibly that they came from an original system of suffixes). A hypothetical example using English words follows: Imagine that, in some exotic language which inexplicably uses familiar English words, all nouns denoting persons are, for some or other reason not immediately important to us, indicated with the "pre-word" "person." So a farmer would be indicated with the name "person farmer." Over time, the "person" pre-word might be shortened to "per" and cliticised, and eventually made into a valid prefix ("per-"), thus a farmer would be "perfarmer." To indicate languages, the pre-word "language" might have been used, which eventually became the prefix "lang-." A noun indicating persons of some ethnic group (with a very familiar name) might have historically been "people french," which eventually became "peopfrench." Thus their language name would naturally be rendered as "langfrench." This way the prefix system would be productive — actively creating new words and not just appearing on some historical words (as is now the case with some non-Bantu Niger–Congo languages which have many Bantu-like nouns but with no productive processes to create more). Eventually, an agreement system would have developed (either with or after the noun prefix system), and "The French people speak the French language" would appear as (in SVO order):
    peopfrench peoplangspeak langfrench
    the "poep-" and "lang-" prefixes on the verb agreeing with the subject and object respectively. The order of the agreement markings on the verb diminishes any possible ambiguity in determining the subject and object, and so the language need not necessarily use SVO, and may change the word order for emphasis (as is indeed the case in the Bantu languages; being tonal, Bantu languages cannot simply use intonation for emphasis as English does):
    langfrench peoplangspeak peopfrench "French people speak the French language"
    peoplangspeak langfrench peopfrench "French people speak the French language"
    In Sesotho, the three example sentences are (using the standard disjunctive Sesotho orthography):
    Bafora ba a se bua Sefora
    Sefora ba a se bua Bafora
    Ba a se bua Sefora Bafora
  3. ^ Additionally, apart from these singular/plural pairings, Proto-Bantu is also reconstructed to have paired *9/10, *11/10, *12/13, *14/6, *15/6, and *20/22. Sesotho pairs include 1/2, 1/6, 1a/2a, 3/4, 5/6, 5/10, 7/8, 9/10, 9/6, and 14/6.
  4. ^ A related phenomenon exists in Swahili where class 10 nouns look exactly the same as class 9 nouns but are used with different concords (corresponding to a zi- prefix). This instance is not idiomatic, however, as class 10 has simply lost the zi- prefix and class membership is determined solely by the concords.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h The names are very rough labels often applied to the specific singular classes in the literature of many of the languages. Except for class 1, they shouldn't really be taken too literally.
  6. ^ One interpretation of these actor nouns is that they are formed by a circumfix of the form "mo-V-i", but this is not a popular view.
  7. ^ This is simply due to the shapes of the words (most class 9 Sesotho words do not show an overt prefix) and not because of semantics. Note that in isiZulu the "default class" is class 5 since most native polysallabic class 5 words in that language have no prefix (just a lengthened pre-prefix/augment i- without following -li-). When foreign words are put in this class the resultant noun is not nasalized.
  8. ^ In Proto-Bantu and many modern Bantu languages this class also contains several normal nouns, with plurals in class 6. Certain Sesotho nouns show evidence of originally being connected with this class:
    Proto-Bantu root *-jedî moon ⇒ class 3 *muedî (Sesotho ngwedi moonlight), class 15 *kuedî + class 9 prefix (compounding) ⇒ class 9 *ŋkuedî (Sesotho kgwedi moon)
    Proto-Bantu root *-giɲja hot season ⇒ class 15 *kuiɲja + class 5 prefix (compounding) ⇒ Sesotho class 5 Lehwetla Autumn
    Note that if these nouns still existed in the non-compounded forms then they could just as easily have been interpreted as class 17 nouns, but comparison with other languages reaveals their true class membership (15).
  9. ^ The use of this term in Bantu linguistics means "formatives placed in the middle of a word" and not the more common "formatives placed in the middle of a morpheme." Bantu languages, being agglutinative, construct words by placing affixes around a stem, and if an affix is always placed after other affixes but before the stem (such as in certain verb tenses and moods) then it is usually called an "infix."
  10. ^ a b c Compare the following words in Sesotho and Setswana:
    Class Setswana (Sesotho) Gloss
    16. Fa setlhareng Sefateng By the tree
    17. Kwa nokeng Nokeng At the river
    18. Mo sedibeng Sedibeng In the well/pool

    The form of the Setswana productive class 17 prefix is irregular, as the historical sound shifts should have resulted in go instead.

  11. ^ a b c Basically, the class 16, 17, and 18 prefixes are high toned but become low when they are immediately followed by a high syllable. Thus, the fa- of the sole class 16 noun is high toned since the root is low, the class 17 ho- is sometimes high and sometimes low, and the class 18 mo- is always low toned since all its noun roots begin with high tones.
  12. ^ This is probably from the same root as the adjective -lelele tall/long. Note the isiZulu adjective -de and the class 17 noun kude.
  13. ^ These are somewhat gramaticalized first parts of genitive compounds. Basically, Proto-Bantu *taate (my father) and *maama (my mother) would have resulted in Sesotho *rare and *mama, both of which are present n Northern Sotho. Possibly due to its rather mixed origins, Sesotho has mme (a contraction of original *mame) and ntate (where the Proto-Bantu *t has failed to become r, and the word has an irregular sylabic nasal).

    The Sotho–Tswana prefixes Rra- and Mma- arose when *rare and *mama were contracted (to rre and mma) and followed by the high toned class 1(a) possessive concord wa- which was then contracted into them, causing them to end in a high toned a. Thus, Sesotho "Mma-x" and "Ra-x" literally mean "mother of x" and "father of x" respectively.

  14. ^ The productive use of these is a recent Southern Bantu innovation, though the suffixes are obviously connected with the root -ana of the noun ngwana (child), and some Proto-Bantu reconstructions seem to have *-jana as a (non-productive) diminutive suffix. The standard Bantu way of forming diminutives is to put the noun in class 12 (Proto-Bantu *ka-) with the plural in class 13 (Proto-Bantu *tu-).
  15. ^ (Ostensibly) from the same Proto-Bantu root (*-kadî) as mosadi (woman; wife). The use of this root to form feminine nouns is not unusual among the Bantu languages, but its use to form augmentatives of nouns is rather surprising.
  16. ^ Comparison with other languages reveals this to be the first part of a compound noun using an archaic verb -ka (resemble). That is, "seka-x" literally means "x-resembler."

References