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Sotho Grammar
This article presents a brief overview of the grammar of the Sesotho and provides links to more detailed articles. Typology The Sesotho language may be described in several ways depending on the aspect being considered. *It is an agglutinative language. It constructs whole words by joining discrete roots and morphemes with specific meanings, and may also modify words by similar processes. *Its basic word order is SVO. However, because the verb is marked with the subject and sometimes the object, this order may be changed to emphasise certain parts of the predicate. *It is a tonal language; more specifically, a complex grammatical tone language. See Sotho tonology. *It has no grammatical case marking on the noun. Nominal roles are indicated by a combination of word order and agreement markers on the verb, with no change to the nouns themselves. *It has a complex grammatical gender system, but this does not include natural gender. See Sotho nouns. *It has head-first order, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rules, a subject that includes phonology, morphology (linguistics), morphology, and syntax, together with phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are, broadly speaking, two different ways to study grammar: traditional grammar and #Theoretical frameworks, theoretical grammar. Fluency in a particular language variety involves a speaker internalizing these rules, many or most of which are language acquisition, acquired by observing other speakers, as opposed to intentional study or language teaching, instruction. Much of this internalization occurs during early childhood; learning a language later in life usually involves more direct instruction. The term ''grammar'' can also describe the linguistic behaviour of groups of speakers and writer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ubuntu (ideology)
Ubuntu (; meaning in some Bantu languages, such as Zulu) describes a set of closely related Bantu African-origin value systems that emphasize the interconnectedness of individuals with their surrounding societal and physical worlds. "Ubuntu" is sometimes translated as "I am because we are" (also "I am because you are"), or "humanity towards others" ( Zulu '). In Xhosa, the latter term is used, but is often meant in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity". Different names in other Bantu languages Although the most popular term referring to the philosophy today is "ubuntu" (Zulu language, South Africa), the philosophy is believed to stretch back to the beginning of proto-Bantu language and has many other names in other Bantu languages. Definitions There are various definitions of the word "Ubuntu". The most recent definition was provided by the ''African Journal of Social Work'' (''AJSW''). The journal defined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penult
''Penult'' is a linguistics term for the second-to-last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main stress falls on the penult in such English words as ''banána'', and ''Mississíppi'', and just about all words ending in ''-ic'' such as ''músic'', ''frántic'', and ''phonétic''. Occasionally, "penult" refers to the last word but one of a sentence. The terms are often used in reference to languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, whose position of the pitch accent or stress of a word falls only on one of the last three syllables, and sometimes in discussing poetic meter. In certain languages, such as Welsh and Polish, stress is always on the penult. in the World A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase. In this sense, it is syntactically independent but phonologically dependent—always attached to a host.SIL International (2003). SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a clitic? "This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003." Retrieved from . A clitic is pronounced like an affix, but plays a syntactic role at the phrase level. In other words, clitics have the ''form'' of affixes, but the distribution of function words. Clitics can belong to any grammatical category, although they are commonly pronouns, determiners, or adpositions. Note that orthography is not always a good guide for distinguishing clitics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotho Deficient Verbs
In the Sotho language, the deficient verbs are a special subset of Sesotho verbs that require a subordinate or complementary verb to complete their action, and which are used to form many tenses and to impart certain shades of meaning to the Predicate (grammar), predicate. These verbs form part of ''multi-verbal conjugations'' comprising a string of verbs (each with its own Sesotho concords#con subjectival, subjectival concord) and Sesotho grammar#gf verbal auxiliary, verbal auxiliaries. Deficient verbs, being "deficient", are never used alone. Many of them are irregular in form and have irregular inflexions. Many of these verbs seem radical in nature, while others (especially those with complex implications) are obviously derived from certain extant normal verbs (but are used with slightly different meanings). What distinguishes the deficient usage of these normal verbs is the fact that they are followed by another verb and affect its meaning (and only the main verb may carry an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional endings) or lexical information ( derivational/lexical suffixes)''.'' Inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. Derivational suffixes fall into two categories: class-changing derivation and class-maintaining derivation. Particularly in the study of Semitic languages, suffixes are called affirmatives, as they can alter the form of the words. In Indo-European studies, a distinction is made between suffixes and endings (see Proto-Indo-European root). A word-final segment that is somewhere between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme is known as a suffixoidKremer, Marion. 1997. ''Person reference and gender in translation: a contrastive investigation of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotho Concords
Just as the Sesotho sentence centres on the Sesotho noun, the noun is made to "concòrd" ("agree") with the verbs, pronouns, and qualificatives describing it by a set of Sesotho ''noun concords''. The noun concord system is the most striking feature of the Bantu language family. The exact number of concord types differs from language to language, and traces of this system (and the noun class system) are even found in some Niger–Congo languages outside the narrow Bantu branch. Concord types There are seven basic sets of concords.The actual number cited may vary from author to author. Some authors prefer to separate the prefixes used to form the demonstrative pronouns from the relative concords (possibly due to the phonetic transformations). Other authors (particularly in entry-level learner texts) treat the "auxiliary concord" as distinct from the subjectival. Some other authors do not seem to recognise the enumeratives as a separate part of speech and as such do not include th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agreement (linguistics)
In linguistics, agreement or concord ( abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender or person) "agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence. For example, in Standard English, one may say ''I am'' or ''he is'', but not "I is" or "he am". This is because English grammar requires that the verb and its subject agree in ''person''. The pronouns ''I'' and ''he'' are first and third person respectively, as are the verb forms ''am'' and ''is''. The verb form must be selected so that it has the same person as the subject in contrast to notional agreement, which is based on meaning. By category Agreement generally involves matching the value of some grammatical category between different constituents of a sentence (or sometimes between sentences, as in some cases where a pronoun is required to agree with its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation'', ''anti-'', ''pre-'' etc., introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. Inflectional affixes introduce a syntactic change, such as singular into plural (e.g. ''-(e)s''), or present simple grammatical tense, tense into present continuous or past tense by adding ''-ing'', ''-ed'' to an English word. All of them are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixes, infixes and their variations Changing a word by adding a morpheme at its beginning is called ''prefixation'', in the middle is called ''infixation'', and at the end is called ''suffixation''. ''Prefix'' and ''suffix'' may be subsumed under the term ''adfix'', in contrast to ''infix.'' When marking text for interlinear gl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prefix (linguistics)
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can be either inflectional, creating a new form of a word with the same basic meaning and same lexical category, or derivational, creating a new word with a new semantic meaning and sometimes also a different lexical category. Prefixes, like all affixes, are usually bound morphemes. English has no inflectional prefixes, using only suffixes for that purpose. Adding a prefix to the beginning of an English word changes it to a different word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. The word ''prefix'' is itself made up of the stem ''fix'' (meaning "attach", in this case), and the prefix ''pre-'' (meaning "before"), both of which are derived from Latin roots. English language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Headword
In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (: lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' are forms of the same lexeme, with ''break'' as the lemma by which they are indexed. ''Lexeme'', in this context, refers to the set of all the inflected or alternating forms in the paradigm of a single word, and ''lemma'' refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme. Lemmas have special significance in highly inflected languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Russian. The process of determining the ''lemma'' for a given lexeme is called lemmatisation. The lemma can be viewed as the chief of the principal parts, although lemmatisation is at least partly arbitrary. Morphology The form of a word that is chosen to serve as the lemma is usually the least marked form, but there are several exceptions such as the use of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotho Verbs
Sesotho verbs are words in the language that signify the action or state of a substantive, and are brought into agreement with it using the subjectival concord. This definition excludes imperatives and infinitives, which are respectively interjectives and class 14 nouns. In the Bantu languages, verbs often form the centre of a complex web of regular derivational patterns, and words/roots belonging to many parts of speech may be directly or indirectly derived from them. Not only may new verbs be derived using a large number of derivational suffixes, nouns (and, iteratively, the other parts of speech that derive from them), some imperative interjectives and, to a lesser extent, ideophones may be formed by simple morphological devices. Varieties Verb stems may be divided into four varieties: #Regular stems beginning with a consonant and ending in a vowel #Monosyllabic verbs #Vowel verb stems begin with a vowel #Derived verbs constructed from other verbs, noun roots, adjectival ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
