The overloading of Northern Sotho prepositions

Abstract

This paper disproves Doke's (1957) view that there are no prepositions in Bantu languages. Scholars like Lombard et. al.(1985) and Louwrens (1991) say nothing about the preposition, but instead talk about particles. This paper seeks to look at the preposition from another perspective. It presents an argument that the particle is an umbrella term, which can justifiably be called a convenient term, a term used to refer to elements that don't clearly enter any class of lexical items. Taking into consideration the functions performed by prepositions, it will be a great injustice to classify them as particles. Within the GB theory, prepositions are assignors of case and theta role, and, traditionally, they do not have phi-features such as gender, number and person, which participate in agreement. To regard prepositions as particles seems to be a linguistic fallacy. It is argued in this paper that what seem like particles are in fact genuine prepositions in the traditional sense. The paper acknowledges and indicates that there are few prepositions in Northern Sotho and this results in their overloading with meanings.