Files are available under licenses specified on their description page. The areas in which are spoken bantu languages of typical structure and archaic form are somewhat widely spread. Bantu language article about bantu language by the free. Typically, bantu languages have somewhere between ten and twenty noun classes, which are overtly marked on. Suba language being a bantu language has a noun class system typical of the other bantu languages and because the language has hardly. An argument that bantu languages possess a closed class of adjectives dixon. Some scholars have proposed other forms, especially for cl. There are five principal factors in bantu languages which contribute to ambiguous analysis of word tbrms. These are languages spoken from limbe to campo and inland. A polyplural noun class is a plural class for more than one singular class. Noun classes are paired up in seven major double class genders, and one minor double class gender. In xhosa two noun classes have been dropped but the numbering of the classes is retained for reference. The exact place of bantu in this framework is controversial, and there is no comprehensive overview of bantu. Nonetheless, noun class systems are grammatically productive in most bantu languages, and semantically productive to some degree.
What is a noun class sil glossary of linguistic terms. These prefixes are used either in a singular or in a plural sense. A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages. Jouni maho a comparative study of bantu noun classes. One of the bestknown features of the bantu languages is their noun class system. Over 500 languages are classified in this family, including swahili, xhosa, and zulu. Gender of noun can also determine case morphology and verb agreement ex. The various bantu languages have different numbers of noun classes. First, nouns are grouped into more than ten marked noun classes. Noun classes in the grassfields bantu borderland can expand the words and meanings of symbols that are often seen daily. In the case of both nalu and yeyi it seems that the verb tenses are. A noun class system is a grammatical system that some languages use to overtly categorize nouns.
Pluralizing nouns across agglutinating bantu languages. The bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is swahili. Which class a noun belongs to is visible in the prefix on the noun itself and in the concord and agreement. Bantu languages, group of african languages forming a subdivision of the benueniger division of the nigercongo branch of the nigerkordofanian language family see african languages african languages, geographic rather than linguistic classification of languages spoken on the african continent.
Did the protobantu verb have a synthetic or an analytic. Noun class system and agreement patterns in logba ikpana. The protoforms of the prefixes of classes 910 in bantu languages have invariably been represented as nn meeussen 1967. A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages comprising those of zanzibar, mozambique, the zambesi, kafirland, benguela, angola, the congo, the ogowe, the cameroons, the lake region, etc. Some languages have limited syllabic nasals and coda syllable. Suba language being a bantu language has a noun class system typical of the other.
They are nearly synonymous with guthries bantu zone s, apart from the exclusion of shona and the inclusion of makhuwa. Learn bantu language with free interactive flashcards. Parts of the bantu area include languages from other language families see map. Though the extent to which the system operates varies greatly, it is nonetheless found in some form in languages. The sixteen original prefixes of the bantu languages are given below in the most archaic forms to be found at the present day. Although some writers say that the semantic productivity of bantu noun classes has reduced, this may need further research because some bantu languages are not well. Disambiguation of morphological analysis in bantu languages. They include all of the important bantu languages of south africa, botswana, lesotho, swaziland, and mozambique, with outliers such as lozi in zambia and namibia. The xhosa language, as all the bantu languages, is structured around the noun. This module offers a comprehensive introduction to the structure of the bantu languages. Some bantu languages such as venda that express variations in size and shape as well as. Fsm2 and the morphological analysis of bantu nouns first. Twelve bantu languages are spoken by more than five million people, including rundi, rwanda, shona, xhosa, and zulu. Did the protobantu verb have a synthetic or an analytic structure.
Bantu noun classes are indicated by nominal prefixes and also. But there is no uptodate, reasonably comprehensive, basic introduction to african languages in english. Mutual intelligibility depends on the closeness of individual languages for example, shona, kalanga and chewa are surprisingly. View bantu linguistics research papers on academia.
All structured data from the file and property namespaces is available under the creative commons cc0 license. A look at the grassfields borderland blasius achiritaboh university of buea, cameroon abstract as is well known, bantu nouns typically consist of a stem each with an overt or covert prefix arranged in classes of singular and plural pairs called genders. Tswana has conflated the reflexes of the protobantu classes 8 and 10. The bantu languages or narrow bantu languages are a branch of the nigercongo languages. Protobantu had 19 classes, most of which have been conserved in its descendant languages, though some classes have been lost in a number of them. Modes of compounding in bantu, romance and chinese 207 several theoretical and empirical analyses, comparatively, nn compounding in bantu languages has been largely neglected.
All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes. Genetically, they form part of benuecongo, itself a part of the huge nigercongo phylum. Pdf noun classes in sari, a beboid language wide bantu. In the hypothetically reconstructed bantu parent language there are 23 noun classes. Introduction verb stems in bantu languages may include a number of derivational suffixes called extensions that express various functions, such as causative, applicative, reciprocal or passive. Choose from 51 different sets of bantu language flashcards on quizlet. There are about 250 bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of presentday cameroon.
Classes 6 and 10 are inherited as polyplural classes by most surviving bantu languages. Geographically, bantu languages are spoken in the southern half of africa. The system of noun classes is probably the characteristic most widely found in nigercongo languages and best known to those interested in language phenomena. 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. The synchronic evidence is drawn primarily from the southern bantu languages sesotho and setswana, and. As the source of bantu languages is generally argued to be in southwest adamawa, new data on bantu and related languages is important to the. Classes 110 and 12 were paired, the first member of the pair was for singular nouns, the second for plural nouns.
Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free. Ha is a d60 bantu language spoken in western tanzania, closely related to rundi and. The legends and traditions of the bantu peoples themselves in variably point to a northern origin, and a period, not wholly re moved from their racial remembrance, when they were strangers in their present lands. Bantu language is a crossword puzzle clue that we have spotted over 20 times. Substantives are divided into classes or genders, indicated by the pronominal particle prefixed to the root. In languages like sesotho, where the locative classes 16, 17, 18 have been largely lost, derivational wordformation processes still show productivity in the human classes 12.
The bantu languages of subsaharan africa are notable for their noun class. Bantu languages root, prefix, prefixes, vowel and language. The phenomenon, in fact, is even more constrained and unproductive than in romance notable exceptions are attested in some bantu languages, e. Kwa and a noun class system that is similar to the bantu languages.
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the attributive noun classes, as well as their suffixal counterparts, firstly in bantu, and secondly in zulu. 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. Bosch university of south africa, southafrica abstract northern sotho and zulu are two south african bantu languages that make use of different. This article discusses verbal relative clauses in the bantu languages spoken. The noun class systems in the bantu languages is characterized by, among other things, the existence of a number of noun classes. Relative clause formation in the bantu languages of south. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu. The typological characteristics of the bantu languages most relevant for this chapter are their noun class system and extensive noun class agreement. The singular form of a noun belongs to a different noun class than the plural form of that. In this chapter i have shown that, despite the reduced number of noun classes found in bantu languages today, there is still some semantic productivity within the system. Noun classes in the grassfields bantu borderland full description. The bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken primarily in the southern part of africa. In the northern caucasian languages noun classes can express the category of number and may be found in nouns and words with which they agree.
The bantu languages are spoken in a very large area, including most of africa from southern cameroon eastward to kenya and southward to the southernmost tip of the continent. All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes varies between 12 and 20. This paper uses historicalcomparative approaches in combination with quantitative methods to analyse data from a survey of varieties of the bantu languages herero and kuvale spoken by ethnically. This volume provides a set of theoreticallyinformed descriptive and typological statements about bantu. The bantu attribute noun class prefixes and their suffixal. Relative clause formation in the bantu languages of south africa jochen zeller linguistics programme, faculty of human sciences, university of kwazulunatal, king george v avenue, glenwood, durban 4041, south africa email. Introduction to the phonology of the bantu languages.
There are over 20 noun classes, although most languages use fewer nurse and. The olusuba noun class system science publishing group. Jouni maho remarks on a few polyplural classes in bantu 163 table 1 summarizes the situation in a selection of the studied languages. Providing descriptive and typological information about the bantu languages of southern africa, this volume brings together a set of expert contributors and is divided into two parts. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation jochen zeller, university of kwazulunatal, durban. Firstly, unlike romance languages, there is a greater variety of bantu languages estimated 250400 separate languages. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of cameroon. Jouni maho, a comparative study of bantu noun classes.
While no single language is known to express all of them, most of them have at least 10 noun classes. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation. For example, protobantu 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. New developments in the classification of bantu languages. Fsm2 and the morphological analysis of bantu nouns first experiences from runyakitara fridah katushemererwe ms thomas hanneforth. But the general deduction to be drawn from a study of the bantu languages, as they exist at the present day, is that at some period not more than 3000 years ago a powerful tribe of negroes speaking the bantu motherlanguage, allied physically to the negroes of the southwestern nile and southern lake chad basins yet impregnated with the. There are about 520 languages in the bantu family, 670 languages in the southern bantoid branch which includes bantu, and 1,532 in nigercongo. The southern bantu languages are a large group of bantu languages, largely validated in janson 199192. West mrican languages exhibited noun class features analogous to those classified as bantu johnston 1886. The investigation will be done with reference to aspects such as the following. Not surprisingly, linguistic fragmentation is highest in the northwest. Bantu languages such as swahili, zulu, chichewa or bemba are spoken by an estimated 240 million speakers in 27 african countries, and are one of the most important language groups in africa in terms of geographical and demographic distribution.
1024 734 979 1096 965 911 244 1154 492 24 518 553 843 381 55 798 1124 157 1416 849 1178 658 1452 920 1088 124 292 886