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. 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.
Structure
Except for class 1a (which has a "null prefix"), nouns are composed of a noun prefixThe 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.
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. 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: The syllabic nasal prefix of class 9 is more often than not invisible Classes 1, 3, and 18 have similar prefixes but differing concords Classes 2a and 14 have similar looking prefixes, differing in the vowel's quality and tone Classes 15 and 17 have similar looking prefixes, differing only in tone Many class 1 and 3 nouns have stems beginning with vowels, often causing the to velarize to + → ('child' cf. Swahili ; Proto-Bantu *-jana) Similarly, many class 14 nouns with stems beginning with vowels cause the prefix to palatalize to + → ('grass' cf. Proto-Bantu *-janî) Often if the stem of a class 1 or 3 noun is derived from a verb beginning with , the is absorbed by the (the vowel is elided) to become ('govern') → ('government')
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 ('person'), to very long stems formed either by duplication (e.g. ('great and fearsome thing', the swallowing monster) or derived from long and complex verbs, such as the seven-syllable ('the act of mutual giving and receiving'), derived from a verb which is in turn idiomatically and recursively and comes through four distinct steps — derived from the verb ('to close one's 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.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):
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 systemClassPrefixSpellingExample(s)Notes1. ('person')human nouns2. ('people')1a.— ('father')mostly human nouns including nouns of kinship.The is high tone2a. ('fathers')3. ('finger')mostly non-human nouns4. ('fingers')5. ('day')both human and non-human6. ('days')7. ('secret')human and non-human8. ('secrets')9.[N]- (variable) ('thing')miscellaneous ('prayer')10. di[N]- ('things') ('prayers')14. ('bread')abstract nouns belong here,therefore most class 14 words have no plural ('ugliness')15. ('to go')infinitives and gerunds belong here16. ('down')this is the only word in this class17. ('far away') ('tomorrow') 18. ('behind') ('overseas')
Notes: [N] means that nasalization will occur to the following consonant. 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 (e.g. 'tongues', 'flattery'). For example, Setswana uses for Sesotho ('love'), as this class still exists in the language. 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. 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. ('tree') has prefix , which is of class 7, therefore its plural must be
Up until class 10, the plural class for class n is class n + 1 (where n is odd).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. 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 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.
('friend'), in class 1, has an irregular plural in class 4 — . Also, ('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 ('grass') in class 14 is often heard as and has plural , both instances of prefix compounding since the is the palatalized class 14 prefix . ('daughter-in-law') was originally a class 1 word, whose prefix is velarized and is now treated as a class 9 noun with plural . In Setswana, however, it is still treated as a class 1 noun with plural
In idiomatic speech, the of class 5, the of class 7, and the of classes 8 and 10 are sometimes not rendered when the noun is followed by the appropriate concords.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 prefix). This instance is not idiomatic, however, as class 10 has simply lost the prefix and class membership is determined solely by the concords. Some historical words, such as ('locust'), have completely lost their singular prefixes (and, in the case of , ended up in class 9). Others, such as ('family') are often rendered without the prefix even when not followed by any prefixes ("at my/the home" is always ). The class 5 noun ('next year') has completely lost its prefix, and has plural .
Class contents
What follows is a brief outline of the contents and functionings of the various classes.
Class 1 (the "animate/human" classThe 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.) contains most human nouns and is the default class for verbal agents (actors), which end in the vowel .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.
The class prefix is and comes from original Proto-Bantu *mu-. In standard Sesotho, the prefix appears as before stems beginning with .
('servant') ('king') ('friend') ('investigate') → ('investigator') ('speak on behalf of') → ('advocate')
Class 1a (the "kin" class) has exactly the same concords as class 1, but differs from it in the lack of prefix. It contains proper names of people, kinship terms, as well as the names of some animals and plants.