The abar dialect shows a different pattern, with class 6 nasal concords in m and nasal pre. This means it can be viewed across multiple devices, regardless of the underlying operating system. The synchronic evidence is drawn primarily from the southern bantu languages sesotho and setswana, and. Pdf the subject marker in bantu as an antifocus marker. However, just outside narrow bantu, noun class prefixesare usually high tone and the nasals are typically missing. Pluralization for runyankore and isizulu, members of the bantu language family. New developments in the classification of bantu languages. Bantu languages are hypothesized to have descended from one mother language, proto bantu. Searching for a specific type of document on the internet is sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack.
This section briefly outlines the challenges inherent in trying to model bantu noun classes. All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes varies between 12 and 20. Class 15, on the other hand, is the class of infinitives in most bantu languages, except in the north of the domain, where infinitives are often of class 5, sometimes also other classes cf. These alterations began with wilhelm bleeks ancient bantu which led to proto bantu. That is, even for languages in which noun class membership is not visible on the noun itself, the class of a noun can be seen from the agreements that it triggers. Guthries classification of languages into zones was based on. I index agreement with numbers referring to noun class in the glosses below. I, not because they belong to the same gender, but because agreement pattern. Some scholars have proposed other forms, especially for cl. To keep it simple, i have divided them into 9 groups. May 23, 2016 included below is a chart of the proto bantu noun class semantic classifications for comparison to the semantic classifications of the nyanja noun classes which follow it. The earliest study of noun classes was conducted in 1659 on bantu languages, and this study has to this day undergone only very minor modifications.
In bantu languages, the formation of nouns via compounding is never very productive, and may be extremely marginal. Some restrictions on sesotho null noun class prefixes. An oversized pdf file can be hard to send through email and may not upload onto certain file managers. Which class a noun belongs to is visible in the prefix on the noun itself and in the concord and agreement. Listed with every word is the bantu zones they are found in. Some bantu languages such as venda that express variations in size and shape as well as the emotive perception by means of suffixes, or by a combination of prefixes and suffixes. By michelle rae uy 24 january 2020 knowing how to combine pdf files isnt reserved. An analysis of noun classes in tikar, a benuecongo language spoken in west central cameroon, looks at patterns in the noun class system, concord system possessives, demonstratives. In most bantu languages, subjectverb agreement is expressed by prefixing a subject marker sm to the verb stem. This will be proved by means of independent evidence from other bantu languages. On the basis of modern bantu evidence and the comparative method, a maximum of 21 classes have been posited for proto bantu. West mrican languages exhibited noun class features analogous to those classified as bantu johnston 1886.
Pdf study of bantu languages morphology of lingala. We aim at filling this part of the inventory by using corpus data as part of an ongoing process. Sesotho noun class prefixes class prefix example gloss. There are five different position classes for verb suffixes and ten different suffixes which affect valence andor grammatical relations. You are probably familiar with the femininemasculine gender system in romance languages. The following example is from the bantu language ganda. Luckily, there are lots of free and paid tools that can compress a pdf file in just a few easy steps. The meinhof numbering tends to be used in scientific works dealing with comparisons of different bantu languages. Class in bantu and its syntactic significance is discussed with reference to gender in indoeuropean and semanticsyntactic features of nouns. Nasals and low tone in grassfields noun class prefixes. Genealogically speaking, bwala belongs to the kasaingounie extended subclade, one of the major monophyletic groups within westcoastal bantu. Classes 56 for objects that come in pairs or larger groups. In most bantu languages, the noun class manifests itself by the use of a noun class prefix, and by the use of class concord cc.
Fsm2 and the morphological analysis of bantu nouns first. Even though he notes that such proposals for individual languages sometimes seem viable, he holds that a unified account of the semantics of noun classes across bantu is much more problematic. Complaint filing in languages other than english hud. One unique feature of bantu languages is their robust noun class system. Table 1 summarizes a basic semantic grid common to bantu noun class systems spitulnik 1989. Pluralizing nouns across agglutinating bantu languages. Guthrie reconstructed both the phonemic inventory and the vocabulary of proto bantu. First nouns are listed by noun class, then verbs are. As one can see, adjectives are sometimes a subclass of verbs gola. One of the fun things about computers is playing with programs like paint. Words not marked for zone were not present in proto bantu proper, and have either been taken in some form from modern bantu languages or created whole cloth. A few languages hadbeen previously eliminated from the sample because the noun classes in question were missing or highly deviant from the usual bantu classes. New developments in the classification of bantu languages and.
Noun classification, definiteness, number, possession. Most bantu languages have around 1518 noun classes which can be distinguished by nominal noun class prefixes, paradigmatic relationships between classes e. Some bantu languages such as venda that express variations in size and shape as well as the emotive perception by means of suffixes, or by a combination of prefixes and suffixes will be investigated. The genderless nouns trigger the same agreement pattern as gender 1, viz. I do not attempt to answer the question of whether present day bantu languages have semantic ally based noun classification systems. Making a pdf file of a logo is surprisingly easy and is essential for most web designers. As it is well known, noun class prefixes are low tone in narrow bantu and classes 1, 3, 4, 6a, 9,and 10 have nasals meeussen 1967. Covered in detail below are the classes 1 to 6, but not 7 to 9 as they are grammatical in nature rather than semantic, class 7 is the class of diminutives, class 8 are. Pdf a typology of bantu subject inversion jenneke van. Each noun belongs to a class, and each language may have several numbered classes, somewhat like. One of the bestknown features of the bantu languages is their noun class system. This article explains what pdfs are, how to open one, all the different ways. In swahili, most foreign words are put into class 9 with their plural in class 10.
The bantu languages are also called class languages because they 1. Further, these noun classes are not only expressed on nouns and adjectives, but also on verbs. The glossing in 1 indicates the agreement preprefix ppf and the class prefix cl on nouns and adnominal modifiers. Subject and object pronominal agreement in the southern bantu. A dichotomy is found in grassfieldsbantu where eastern grassfields resembles narrow bantu. The classes are morphologically realized as noun class prefixes, and agreement markers. Originally, bantu languages had over 20 noun categories. The ha noun class system revisited abstract ha is a d60 bantu language spoken in western tanzania, closely related to rundi and nyarwanda. This dictionary is not ordered entirely alphabetically. In munken class 6, this nasal is n, clearly distinct from an m associated with 6a. One of the quintessential typological properties of the bantu languages is their pervasive system of noun classes and noun class agreement.
Introduction studies of the noun in bantu languages have traditionally concentrated on the morphology of the noun with its elaborate class system and the underlying semantic strands. Thus the sudanic languages are monosyllabic, genderless, employ tone for semantic distinctions, and place the genitive before the governing noun. All studies of the acquisition of bantu noun class prefixes report the following three partially overlapping stages of development during ages of 23. Full and phonologically appropriate noun class prefixes. Apr 02, 2021 although one of the main points of interest is the fascinating variation in the family, a couple of generalizations can be made with respect to bantu morphosyntax. You can use the tools in paint to add something to a different document. It has been observed that noun classes can also be semantically classified. May 19, 2019 bantu languages are hypothesized to have descended from one mother language, proto bantu. This is comparable to gender as found in romance languages, where each. In bantu languages that have productive locative class prefixes, the locative morpheme is prefixed to the nominal stem, complete with its original noun class prefix. The bantu attribute noun class prefixes and their suffixal. Counting from one to ten in kikongo our language of reference gives the pattern of the creation with the first decalogue of the bible, the ten logos or words which generated the light, the heaven, the. Observations on normal classes in bantu languages volume 18 issue 3 malcolm guthrie.
Diminutives in bantu are thought to have been historically expressed as part of the noun class system, and several noun classes have been reconstructed as including diminutive meaning maho 1999. The languages represent 52 of the 83 groups listed by bryan 1059. Classes 6 and 10 are inherited as polyplural classes by most surviving bantu languages, but many languages have developed new polyplural classes that are not widely shared by other languages. The paint program can help you make new image files, but it cannot open document or pdf file. Table 1 provides a list of noun class prefixes found in sesotho.
Semantic classification and chichewa derived nouns thokozani. Five suffixes decrease valence and five increase valence. Observations on normal classes in bantu languages bulletin. Both languages treated so far distinguish noun class dependent and noun class. Observations on normal classes in bantu languages volume 18 issue 3 malcolm guthrie skip to main content accessibility help we use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. The semantic system of noun classes in protobantu jstor. Classes 34 for plants, trees and natural phenomena. To combine pdf files into a single pdf document is easier than it looks. The concept of noun classes is similar, except while romance languages have 23 genders, bantu languages can have up to 23 noun classes. Nc augment pre x stem word meaning example example 1 u mu fana umfana humans and other. Semantic classification and chichewa derived nouns.
Bantu noun class systems integrating the study of mind, brain. Bantu languages are characterised by a comprehensive noun class and concordial agreement system among terms. Similar to all bantu languages, runyakitara has a noun class system. This paper presents the noun class system of bwala, a nearly undocumented and undescribed bantu language of the teke group spoken in the kinshasa province of the democratic republic of the congo. Bantu noun classes all nouns in bantu languages belong to a noun class. Carstens 1991, 1993, 2008 analyzes bantu noun classes as combined number and gender information, e. The olusuba noun class system science publishing group. A pdf file is a portable document format file, developed by adobe systems.
Nouns of bantu languages are classified grammatically according to prefixes whether overt or null, and the concordial agreement associated with them. All derivations are listed with what they are derived from as well. Skip to main content accessibility help we use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. The generic pluralizer is presented in section 4 and it is evaluated in section 5. A comprehensive view of class 5 merges class 21 into class 5 and suppresses the need for a prosthetic element to account for monosyllabic stems. The noun class system of bwala, an undocumented teke language. Introduction studies of the noun in bantu languages have traditionally concentrated on the morphology of the noun with its elaborate class. Johnston later went on to produce an extensive study of bantu and semi bantu pointing out these connections without clarifying the implications for genetic relationships or. For this reason, noun classes are often referred to by combining their singular and. I paid for a pro membership specifically to enable this feature. The most prominent grammatical characteristic of bantu languages is the extensive use of affixes see sotho grammar and ganda noun classes for detailed discussions of these affixes.
This is unlike noun class marking, which, as we saw, is often related to the presence of dependent elements. Toward a knowledgetotext controlled natural language of. Bantu languages make extensive use of noun classes, which are often analysed as a form of grammatical gender. A polyplural noun class is a plural class for more than one singular class. In addition, there are at least four frozen suffixes and three productive. Meinhof 1932 reconstructed 21 noun class prefixes for proto bantu, but not all of these are found in any one language. The protoforms of the prefixes of classes 910 in bantu languages have invariably been represented as nnmeeussen 1967. Closed adjective classes and primary adjectives in african. Press room program offices resources contact us informacin en espaol how to file a fair housing complaint in languages other than english it is illegal to discriminate in the sale or rental of housing, mortgage lending, and other housingre.
In a critical reappraisal of the treatment of shona noun classes, i challenge the hypothesized form of class 5 nominal prefix, ri, as it hardly ever appears as such in the language. The degree of semantic motivation for noun classes varies from language to language. There is an abundant literature on gender in the bantu languages see. Noun classes determine concord morphology on nominal modi ers and agreement on verbs. Patterns and developments in the marking of diminutives in bantu. Kom has reflexes of bantu classes 110, 19, and 6a the last of which being distinguished from class 6. Unmarked word order in bantu languages is svo with the subject triggering obligatory agreement on the verb. In sesotho,1 as in other bantu languages, number and class are marked by a noun class nc prefix. Kikongo is undoubtedly the native language of humanity with plenty of its words rooted in ancient and modern european languages. In languages such as zulu and northern sotho the existence of possible frozen remnants of such attributive noun class prefixes will be investigated. A common characteristic of bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for human being or in simplistic terms person, and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with mu class 1 in most languages is ba class 2, thus giving bantu for people. Xu, but more often a subclass of nouns hausa, basaa, most bantu languages.
Document resume ed 107 110 fl 006 296 bell, alan development. Toward a knowledgetotext controlled natural language of isizulu 5 table 1 zulu noun classes nc, with an example for each noun class, based on meinho s classi cation, and the kind of entities typically classi ed into that noun class. Depending on the type of scanner you have, you might only be able to scan one page of a document at a time. Patterns and developments in the marking of diminutives in. Bantu noun class systems in comparative and diachronic perspective scholars of bantu languages have long posited a common proto bantu pb source from which modernday bantu languages have evolved. According to him, the only generalizations that hold across bantu are the fact that the 12 gender denotes. The typological characteristics of the bantu languages most relevant for this chapter are their noun class system and extensive noun class agreement. The 15 classes 3 of which are locative are numbered according to the meinhof system. Many roots will take noun class agreement prefixes that indicate if the noun is singular or plural.
In my phd dissertation harjula 2004 i described the grammar of the language, including the noun class system. The bantu languages are polysyllabic, employ class prefixes, use tone for grammati cal rather than semantic distinctions, place the genitive after the governing noun, etc. Olusuba is one of the marginalized bantu languages of. Sometimes they are defined on morphological grounds basaa, sometimes on syntactical ones hausa. The bantu languages are also called class languages because 1. The forms of the mprefixes of 84 bantu languages were obtained. For example, proto bantu class 10 contains plurals of class 9 nouns and class 11 nouns, while class 6 contains plurals of class 5 nouns and class 15 nouns. Pdf file or convert a pdf file to docx, jpg, or other file format. The striking difference in the number of classes posited for proto bantu and.
For instance, in swahili the word rafiki friend belongs to the class 9 and its plural form is marafiki of the class 6, even if most nouns of the 9 class have the plural of the class 10. Pdf is a hugely popular format for documents simply because it is independent of the hardware or application used to create that file. Noun classes in bantu languages constitute an example of a semantically opaque system. Demuth 2003 describes bantu noun classification system as such. The acquisition of bantu languages katherine demuth brown. There is also a morphological slot within the verb template for object marking, though this is optional in most constructions, depending on the language. The singular form of a noun belongs to a di erent noun class than the plural form of that noun does. As a typical bantu language, gitonga possesses a complex system of noun classes with an equally.
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