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. The Sesotho parts of speech convey the most basic meanings and functions of the words in the language, which may be modified in largely predictable ways by affixes and other regular morphological devices. Each complete word in the Sesotho language must comprise some "part of speech."
There are basically twelve parts of speech in Sesotho. The six major divisions are purely according to syntax, while the sub-divisions are according to morphology and semantic significance.
+ Parts of speechThe peculiar names are due to Doke. Note that: The more familiar terms "conjunction" and "interjection" are special (radical) types of "conjunctives" and "interjectives" The simple "copulative" is usually expressed without the use of verbs (in contrast to "copulas" in English); There are four types of "qualificatives" (not simply one type of "adjective") distinguished morphologically by their use of concords; "Ideophones" (a term coined by Doke specifically for Bantu linguistics), unlike most English onomatopoeias, describe verbs and "qualificatives" (just like English adverbs); many of them describe qualities and actions which produce no obvious sound (such as redness, dying, darkness, silence, disappearing into a corner, appearing alone at a height, walking quickly due to feeling cold, etc.); and so forth.
The grammatical classification is obviously quite different from that of European and Classical languages, and these terms are used to avoid the temptation of treating Bantu languages in the same manner as European languages, and to avoid the implications of more traditional terms. Substantives signify concrete or abstract concepts:
Nouns Pronouns
Qualificatives qualify substantives: Adjectives Relatives Enumeratives Possessives
Predicatives signify an action or state connected with the substantive: Verbs Copulatives
Descriptives describe qualificatives, predicatives, or other descriptives: Adverbs Ideophones
Conjunctives introduce or join up sentences Interjectives are exclamations
As a rule, Bantu languages do not have any prepositionsSometimes a certain class of constructions are called "prepositions" in Sesotho, but this is merely a misunderstanding aggravated by the disjunctive Sesotho orthography. They are formed from adverbs of place by contracting the locative class' possessive concord (ha-) affixed to the following word into them (as evidenced by the fact that they all end with a high tone a, and affect the tone of the following noun), and produce similar meanings to English prepositions: hare ha ntlo ('inside the house') → hara ntlo tlase ha majwe ('underneath rocks') → tlasa majwe pela- ('next to'), ka pela- ('in front of'), ka mora- ('behind/after'), hodima- ('above'), etc...
In each case, the "preposition" is found to be part of a genitive (possessive) compound formed with the following orthographical "word", but the current disjunctive orthography writes these parts separately. Note that in the Lesotho orthography an apostrophe is used to indicate the missing final vowel of the first word and of the possessive concord (that is, the examples would be written and ). or articles. In Sesotho, locatives are inflected substantives and verb imperatives are treated as interjectives. The division of the four qualificatives is dependent solely on the concords that they use.Other researchers call adjectives and relatives "agreeing adjectives" and "non-agreeing adjectives" respectively. In Sesotho, at least, these terms are only truly meaningful when forming simple copulatives (since adjectives assume the class prefix but relatives do not). In non-copulative uses in Sesotho, all qualificatives agree with the noun they are qualifying.
The terms have more validity in languages such as Swahili where the "non-agreeing adjectives" really don't concord with the nouns they describe. Cardinals are nouns but are given a separate section below.
In form, some parts of speech (adjectives, enumeratives, some relatives, some possessives, and all verbs) are radical stems which need affixes to form meaningful words; others (copulatives, most possessives, and some adverbs) are formed from full words by the employment of certain formatives; the rest (nouns, pronouns, some relatives, some adverbs, all ideophones, conjunctives, and interjectives) are complete words themselves which may or may not be modified with affixes to form new words. Therefore, the term "word classes" instead of the somewhat more neutral "parts of speech" would have been somewhat of a misnomer.
Nouns
Pronouns:Absolute Demonstratives This That That yonder Quantitative Qualificative
Pronouns
There are four main types of pronouns in Sesotho: absolute, demonstrative, quantitive, and qualificative. Each pronoun is a complete word and may stand in place of the noun or right next to it (for emphasis).
Concords are NOT pronouns. Concords are usually mandatory in certain places while pronouns are often not. Pronouns cannot be used in place of concords. Pronouns are complete words while concords are strictly affixes.
+The absolute, demonstrative, and quantitative pronounsClassAbsoluteDemonstrativeQuantitative1st. position2nd. position3rd. position1st. form2nd. form1st. form2nd. form1st. form2nd. formFirst and second persons(1st. pers. sg.) nna———————(1st. pers. pl.) rona———————(2nd. pers. sg.) wena———————(2nd. pers. pl.) lona———————Third persons and noun classesClass 1(a). yena eo enwa eo eno yane elwa—Class 2(a). bona baa bana bao bano bane bale bohleClass 3. ona oo ona oo ono wane ole ohleClass 4. yona ee ena eo eno yane ela yohleClass 5. lona lee lena leo leno lane lela lohleClass 6. ona aa ana ao ano ane ale ohleClass 7. sona see sena seo seno sane sela sohleClass 8. tsona tsee tsena tseo tseno tsane tsela tsohleClass 9. yona ee ena eo eno yane ela yohleClass 10. tsona tsee tsena tseo tseno tsane tsela tsohleClass 14. bona boo bona boo bono bane bola bohleClass 15, 16, 17, 18. hona hoo hona hoo hono hane hola hohle
Absolute pronouns
These merely stand in place of nouns and say nothing else about them. They are formed from the pronominal concord of the noun (Doke & Mofokeng claims that the pronominal concord is actually derived from the absolute pronoun) plus the suffix -na. Note that any affixes attached to the pronoun do not change its form.In the Nguni languages, for example, prefixes are attached to the pronoun's prefix without a suffix.
isiXhosa mna 1st. person singular absolute pronoun → unyana wam my son, uthetha nam he is speaking to me, ndim it is me, yiza'pha kum come hither to me, etc.
The tone pattern is [ _ ¯ ].
wena o batla eng? ('you, what do you want?') (the pronoun is merely used for emphasis)
When a verb has two objects, the second object cannot be indicated in Sesotho by a concord: ke ba1 bontshitse yona2 ('I showed it2 to them1') .
Demonstrative pronouns
Sesotho has three positional types of pronouns (1 less than many other Bantu languages; the missing one being the 3rd. form "this here") each in two forms.
When the relative concord is used to form the demonstrative pronouns it appears with a more natural high tone instead of the irregular extra-high allotone. However, in the rarely used first form of the first demonstrative it appears with a low tone.
The first demonstrative
The first demonstrative signifies "this" indicating proximity to the speaker. It corresponds to Bantu 1st. position.
The first form has tone pattern [ _ ¯ ] and is formed by suffixing the relative concord with the vowel in the class prefix (the exception being class 1(a) using eo, due to its irregular concords, and class 9 uses ee). This pronoun is not very commonly used.
dintja tsee ('these dogs')
In common speech they are often simply shortened to the first syllable, and there is at least one commonly used formation where the pronoun for the first person singular is used as an enclitic.
ke nna o ('here I am')
The second form has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and is formed by suffixing -na to the relative concord (the exception being class 1(a) enwa, but it appears as ona in non-standard speech). These words have an irregular stress which falls on the final syllable.
batho ba ('these people')
The second demonstrative
The second demonstrative signifies "that" indicating relative distance from the speaker. It corresponds to Bantu 2nd. position.
The first form has tone pattern [ ¯ _ ] and suffixes -o to the relative concord.
sefofane seo ('that airplane') .
This form is the one employed in indirect relative constructions lesedi leo ke le bokellang ('the data which I am collecting')
The second form has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and suffixes -no to the relative concord.
morero ono ('that purpose')
The third demonstrative
The third demonstrative signifies "that yonder" indicating distance from both parties. It corresponds to Bantu 4th. position.
The first form has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and is formed by suffixing -ane to the relative concord. In this case the a interacts strongly with the vowel in the concord.
koloi yane ('that car there') setshwantsho sane ('that picture there')
The second form has tone pattern [ ¯ _ ] and is formed somewhat irregularly from the relative concord. The suffix is -la which changes to -le if the concord ends with an a. Class 1(a) has an irregular pronoun with elwa (but it appears as ole in non-standard speech). In common speech -le is used throughout.
naledi ela ('that star there')
Quantitative pronouns
While many other Bantu languages have several quantitative pronouns, Sesotho only has the -hle ('all') form. It has tone pattern [ ¯ ¯ ] and is formed from the pronominal concord for nouns (singular persons use class 1's concords and plural persons use class 2's concords).
letsatsi lohle ('the whole day')
Qualificative pronouns
Qualificative pronouns are qualificatives used substantivally in a sentence. They are basically formed when a qualificative is used without the substantive, or if it appears before the substantive.This is not merely a formalism. The fact that this action creates a separate part of speech can be more clearly seen in other languages such as isiZulu, where a simple inflected qualificative is sometimes slightly morphologically distinct from its pronominal use.
Inja yami emhlophe My white dog Eyami emhlophe My white one
Dikoloi tse ntle ('the beautiful cars') → tse ntle di fihlile (The beautiful ones [cars] have arrived')
Adjectives:Common Colour
Adjectives
Adjectives are qualificatives used with the adjectival concords.
In the Bantu languages, the adjectives form a closed class (with some languages having no proper adjectives at all). Sesotho has a rather large number of adjectives due to the included colour adjectives. It has about 50 adjectives which may be divided into two categories:
Common adjectives
Common adjectives are miscellaneous in nature and number about 20. The numbers 2 to 5 belong to this category.
{| class = "wikitable" width = "500 |+Example common adjectives!Stem||English meaning(s) |- | -be||'bad' |- | -holo||'big' |- | -ng||'other' |- | -bedi||'two' |- | -lelele, -telele||'tall', 'long' |- | -tshehadi||'female' |- | -nyane, -nyenyane||'small', 'few' |- | -tle||'beautiful' |- | -kae?||'how much?' |- | -ngata||'many'
Many of these adjectives are very ancient and exist in almost every Bantu language (sometimes as relatives).
Colour adjectives
Colour adjectives are a bit more numerous and indicate basic colours and animal colour patterns. These are responsible for the unusually large number of adjectives in Sesotho, since most other Bantu languages have the colours as relatives instead.