The Olusuba Noun Class System

Abstract

Noun classification is one of the prime markings of any Bantu language. It is characterized by the categorization of nouns into noun classes which often pair into singular and plural pairings. These classes are often marked with a numbering system. Suba language being a Bantu language has a noun class system typical of the other Bantu languages and because the language has hardly any evidence of a description of any aspect of its grammar this study seeks to describe this significant aspect of it, laying emphasis on the role of syntax in the morphological structure of the noun. The study took a qualitative approach with the descriptive research design. It was guided by the theory of distributed morphology introduced in 1993 by Morris Halle and Alec Marantz. The theory demonstrates the inter-relatedness between the various components of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics). Data was collected in Mfangano Island, which is a homogeneous set up of Suba indigenous people. A sample of forty elders was purposively selected to provide the data. Focus group discussion and elicitation methods were used to collect a corpus of the Suba language which was recorded through audio taping and field notes. The recorded data was then analyzed using the item-and-arrangement approach of morphological structure analysis. This revealed that the classification of the Olusuba noun into a class is motivated by both the morpholosyntactic realization of the noun and the semantics of the noun.