A REVIEW OF THE SO-CALLED -BE/-BA PAST TENSES OF ZULU

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give a semantic explanation of the verb groups with -be/-ba as a deficient verb stem and to account for elision within the deficient verb groups. The different types of complements will also be discussed. Having studied the findings of several grammarians on the so-called compound tenses of the African languages, it has become evident that they more or less have the same view of these verb forms in question. To them these forms constitute past tenses. Elision has been indicated but not exhaustively discussed. To them the semantic notion par-exellence is that of continuation of the action. As tense is a deictic category which relates the time of the action, event or state of affairs to the time of utterance, the forms containing -be/-ba as a deficient verb cannot be regarded as tense indicating. -be/-ba is used to indicate the shifting of the deictic centre from “now” to a new selected point in time. The deficient verb forms s/c + a + be, s/c + be, s/c + zo + ba/be and s/c + yo ...