Nguni Languages Research Articles

Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (editor-in-chief) et al. Oxford IsiZulu-IsiNgisi/English-Zulu Isichazamazwi Sesikole / School Dictionary.

The publishers of this dictionary are to be commended on a new approach to school dictionaries in the South African context. This publication is a most important addition to the range of dictionaries linking indigenous African languages with English presently available, especially since there is a dearth of desk dictionaries in which a Nguni language (e.g. Zulu or Xhosa) is lemmatised. Until now, such dictionaries (in which English lemmas are coupled with Zulu or Xhosa translations and/or definitions) have mostly served as decoding resource for mother tongue speakers of the Nguni language or an encoding resource for speakers of English. This dictionary breaks new ground in that it provides the ‘ordinary’ user (i.e. not only funded lexicographers, who have access to comprehensive dictionaries) with access to the full spectrum of what a translating dictionary should have on offer. Good things are to be said about the format of presentation. As in the case of the Oxford English-Afrikaans School dictionary, its attractive design and structure presents an invitation to the would-be user to mine the contents for links to the target language. Structured according to the well-developed Oxford template, it combines usefulness with attractiveness. The cover design, as one has come to know it, sports the ubiquitous corporate identity and marketing slogans, but also reveals important information about the content, in addition to a brief preview of the microstructure on the back cover. A highlighted grouping of some three articles from both languages is used to demonstrate four key areas of application, e.g. the appropriate selection from the domain of usage, high frequency equivalents, actual usage, and the inclusion of subject terminology as used in the school curriculum.

Circumfixes as emergent linguistic structures

One of the manifestations of linguistic complexity is what Dahl (2004:2) describes as ‘grammatical constructions whose expression is longer than apparently necessary from a cross-linguistic perspective’. In the morphological system of Nguni languages there is a range of co-occurring affixes in both the nominal and the verbal morphological systems that seem to be unnecessary from a cross-linguistic comparison of Bantu languages in southern Africa. The relations between these co-occurring prefix and suffix pairs have not been accounted for in the traditional descriptive grammars of these languages despite the fact that their correlations are quite obvious. For the purpose of the development of morphosyntactic tags for the Nguni languages, we treated such affix pairs as discontinuous morphemes, that is, circumfixes. In this article, we would like to show that the circumfixes of the Nguni languages are typical emergent phenomena in that they ‘arose unexpectedly’ given comparable expressions in the other southern African Bantu languages, and in that they have a ‘natural origin’ from a cross-linguistic perspective. Put differently, they are the result of what Dahl (2004:27) calls ‘a symmetric mutual attunement’ of elements from similar expressions in other Bantu languages and perhaps even other African languages.

Tswana locatives and their status in the inversion construction

Several articles published in the last decade have demonstrated that, in several Sotho-Tswana (S30) and Nguni (S40) languages, locative marking has ceased to be integrated into the noun class system, and preverbal locatives in inversion constructions do not show evidence of being grammatical subjects. Part of the literature on Tswana suggests however that in both respects, Tswana might be different. The present article argues that the locative system of Tswana is in fact not particularly conservative (and is even more innovative than that of the other S30-40 languages), and the preverbal locatives in the inversion construction of Tswana do not show properties that could support analyzing them differently from the preverbal locatives in the other S30-40 languages.

Borrowing and Loan Words: The Lemmatizing of Newly Acquired Lexical Items in Sesotho sa Leboa

The influence of foreign languages in Sesotho sa Leboa, or Northern Sotho, results in borrowing, which ultimately leads to an increase in the vocabulary of Sesotho sa Leboa. The languages influencing developments in the vocabulary of Sesotho sa Leboa include, inter alia, English, Afrikaans, Xitsonga, Tshivend√a and the Nguni languages. This article aims to give a critical analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the adoption of foreign lexical items in the lemmatization of vocabulary in Sesotho sa Leboa dictionaries. Most puristic inclined academics and intellectuals are reluctant to adopt loan words as a means of developing the Sesotho sa Leboa vocabulary. When confronted with borrowing, the purists usually prefer coinage, using indigenous lexical items to name foreign concepts. This is disadvantageous to the development of the vocabulary of the language because (1) there is no increase in the number of the lexical items in the language since only the meanings of the foreign lexical item are added to existing indigenous lexical items, and (2) in most cases, previously adopted loan words are mistaken for indigenous lexical items and given preference to newly acquired lexical items which have direct and accurate bearing on the meaning of the newly discovered or designed concepts or objects. Keywords: Borrowing, Loan Words, Lexical Items, Foreign Acquisition, Foreign Words, Coinage, Coined Lexical Items, Purism, Standard Language, Standardization, Lemmatization, Developed Languages, Corpora

Compiling a bidirectional dictionary bridging English and the Sotho languages: a viability study

The aim of this article is to investigate the viability of the compilation of a single bidirectional dictionary with a single lemma list for the Sesotho sa Leboa, Setswana and Sesotho → English side and a simultaneous treatment of the three Sotho languages in the articles of the English lemmas in the English → Sesotho sa Leboa, Setswana and Sesotho side of the dictionary. Specific attention will be given to selected macrostructural and microstructural aspects of such a compilation. Keywords: sotho languages, nguni languages, bilingual dictionaries, communicative equivalence, corpora, user perspective

Tone and depression in Phuthi

This paper outlines key tone and voice quality properties in Phuthi, a Nguni (Bantu) language spoken in southern Lesotho and the northern Transkei (South Africa). The focus is the phonological presence of high tone (H) in Phuthi, and its interaction with other tones, both H and L. From verbs that employ a single H tone sponsor (lexical paradigms), the paper proceeds to the interaction of these patterns with the class of object prefixes, then to the patterns encountered in grammatical (non-indicative) paradigms with two Hs in a single verb stem. Finally, I examine the interaction of H with potentially multisyllabic tonal ‘depressor domains’ that condition low tone. Depressor domains are triggered in the phonology by depressed (apparently breathy voiced) segments—and also in the morphology and the lexicon. The paper catalogues potential right-edge prominence targets in H domain expansion, the nature of the proposed active L tone, and the role of a domain head in the resolution of depressor/tone conflicts (including ‘depressor-induced H tone shift’).

Naming in Nguni Languages: The Case of Ngoni in Northern Malawi

Shakespeare once asked, ‘What is in a name?' The answer to this age-old question depends on the particular culture from which the term name is framed. In Nguni and other Southern African languages, for example, a name tells a lot about the individual that it identifies the linguistic matrix from which it is drawn, and the society that ascribes to it. A name may indicate the morphological structures and phonological processes found in the language, the position of the name's bearer in society, and the collective history and life experiences of the people surrounding the individual. In this paper we will explore the morphology, semantic import, and function of first names among the Ngoni of northern Malawi, an offshoot of the Nguni that left South Africa during the Shaka wars in the 1820s. We will do this by addressing some of the questions, .e.g. How do Ngoni people name their children, how are names deployed, and how important are names in the discourse and interlocution among members of that society? What does a name tell us about social change and people's beliefs? How does the naming system among the Ngoni compare with those of the Nguni they left behind in South Africa, such as the Zulu? These are some of the questions that we will be discussing in this paper by analyzing data collected from northern Malawi and Zululand.LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 5 2008: pp. 103-122

Sociolinguistic oppression or expression of 'Zuluness'? 'IsiHlonipho' among isiZulu-speaking females

The linguistic complexities in the Nguni language cluster which females traditionally confront, are most notable. Many Zulu women, for instance, who grow up in rural KwaZulu-Natal still largely adhere to the linguistic custom of 'isiHlonipho', the 'language of respect'. This linguistic register has been investigated with reference to Xhosa women (Finlayson, 1978; 1995; 2002; Dowling, 1988) but only marginally as regards isiZulu-speaking females (see Zungu,1985; 1995). Arguably, the value of this linguistic custom is contested as, on the one hand, 'isiHlonipho' is widely considered a source of enrichment among isiZulu speakers; on the other hand it has been argued, with reference to isiXhosa, that 'the historical existence of the language of respect has influenced the way in which Xhosa males have marginalised women in their literature, and in their social, educational and political institutions' (Dowling, 1988: 180). In this paper, we critically evaluate the extent to which this language variety determines gendered power relations and associated identi- ties within the context of the construction of 'Zuluness'. We suggest, inter alia, that 'isiHlonipho' is a linguistic remnant of 'traditional' Zulu culture. It can thus be considered a linguistic and cultural resource in the sense that it provides a means by which isiZulu-speaking people negotiate and take pride in 'Zuluness'. However, one has to acknowledge that Zulu society continues to be highly patriarchal, and the emphasis on female agency linked to the maintenance of the variety suggests that there are circumstances and situations in which 'isiHlonipho' socially disempowers women. Hence, the linguistic register plays an ambiguous role in the life-experience of Zulu females today.

On the relation between noun prefixes and grammaticalisation in Nguni relative clauses*

Abstract. This paper discusses morphological and syntactic aspects of relative clauses in two related Southern Bantu language groups. In Sotho‐Tswana, object relative clauses are formed by means of clause‐initial relative complementisers which agree with the head noun. In contrast, object relatives in the Nguni languages are formed by means of relative concords which are attached to the relative clause predicate and express agreement with the subject. I suggest that the Nguni relative concords are the result of a grammaticalisation process in which early Nguni relative complementisers first turned into clitics and then into relative concords. On the basis of a detailed analysis of this process I further argue that the syntactic difference between Sotho‐Tswana and Nguni relative clauses is correlated with a morphological difference between nouns in these languages.

Ulimi lwenkululeko: Township ‘women's language of empowerment’ and homosexual linguistic identities

abstract The repertoire of South African females in the Nguni language cluster is remarkably diverse. Considering not only so-called ‘standard’ languages, but also different varieties, sociolects, ethnolects and registers, the linguistic diversity of South Africans is even more noteworthy. In this focus we explore a language variety termed isiTsotsi, which if employed by females, is often associated with lesbianism in KwaZulu-Natal. The masculinity historically and traditionally linked to isiTsotsi is the reason why there exists the common perception among men that females who do employ isiTsotsi-varieties must be lesbians. While many urban lesbians may indeed make use of the variety, this paper shows that the female use of isiTsotsi does not represent an exclusively homosexual register, but rather a context-dependent sociolect that African streetwise women employ to empower themselves. Hence, female isiTotsi-speakers are not necessarily representative of lesbian society in South Africa. Rather, they represent a new generation of emancipated African females who are capable of communicating their freedom and equality in relation to men.

Noun classification and congruence in German and Zulu – a contrastive analysis

Teaching German as a foreign language in post-apartheid South Africa is different and more complex than before, because of the multilingual nature of the groups of learners with which the teachers are confronted, as opposed to the monolingual and monocultural groups before 1994. Taking cognizance of the full repertoire of languages represented in the classroom is not a new idea, but the current situation is such that teachers of German in South Africa have little or no knowledge of the Bantu languages, which renders them unable to do so. Contrastive analyses of German and the Nguni and Sotho languages and textbooks aimed specifically at the needs of South African learners of German as a foreign language have become a necessity. The focal point of this article is a comparison of the congruence systems in German and Zulu. Keywords : contrastive analysis, cognitive approach to language learning, primary language, first language, foreign language, congruence Journal for Language Teaching Vol. 39(1) 2005: 1-16

A cognitive semantic approach to the linguistic construal of UPPER SPACE in Southern Ndebele

This paper investigates the expression of spatial notions in Southern Ndebele (S. Ndebele), especially the four etymologically-related terms phezu (kwa-+N), phezulu, ngaphezu (kwa-+N) and ngaphezulu. They serve to express orientational and topological notions referring to UPPER SPACE. Starting with the descriptive task of demarcating their respective meanings and uses, the discussion involves important cognitive semantic parameters. The analysis shows that these locatives are best understood as etymologically-related radial categories which have undergone different diachronic developments, notwithstanding considerable overlap. They are all highly context-sensitive. Here, the focus lies on the semantics of co-occurring landmark and trajector noun phrases. Verbs often bear valency-related derivational morphology when used with these locatives whose status in terms of syntactic category is therefore not entirely clear. Consequently, it is problematic to characterise S. Ndebele with regard to Slobin's typology of verb- and satellite-framed languages. A plausible hypothesis (requiring further research) is that the Nguni languages are borderline cases, undergoing a diachronic move from rather verb-framed to more satellite-framed — with the concomitant changes in the construal of locative expressions. A first step towards an answer is presented here: the detailed cognitive-semantic analysis of synchronic polysemy and historical semantic changes of the spatial terms under study.

Ndebele (review)

Reviewed by: Ndebele ed. by Claire Bowern, Victoria Lotridge Michael Cahill Ndebele. Ed. by Claire Bowern and Victoria Lotridge. (Languages of the world/Materials 416.) LINCOM Europa, 2002. Pp. iv, 93. ISBN 389586465X. $38. This volume sketches the structure of the Zimbabwe dialect of Ndebele, an Nguni language (Bantu). It is a product of a field methods course at Harvard University, where ten student contributors worked with a single speaker. Besides the editors, these contributors were Emily Alling, Luce Aubrey, Gorm Amand, Dominica Baran, Maryann Cockerill, Balkiz Öztürk, Gülsat Aygen, and Ju-Eun Lee. The 77 pages of discussion are divided into sections on phonology, morphology, and syntax, and an interlinear text. The phonological inventory of Ndebele includes a five-vowel system, consonantal contrasts at four places of articulation for nasals, voiced stops, voiceless aspirated stops, ejective stops, and prenasalized voiced stops. Only four click phones are listed in this work, though twelve are evidently distinguished by the orthography. High and low tones are listed but not marked for most of the book. The presence of stress is also noted, although we are not informed of its phonetic correlates. A few phonological processes are noted. Morphology of nouns and verbs is covered in detail, constituting almost half the book. Ndebele has a complex system of noun class marking and agreement of an adjective with its governing noun. The contributors also discuss the intricate verb morphology typical of Bantu languages, with sections on stem extensions such as causative, applicative, reciprocal, passive, and so forth (including ‘randomness’ and ‘thoroughness’). Bantu specialists will inevitably be disappointed at the lack of depth of many of their favorite topics, but the breadth of coverage is impressive. Much of the information is given in lists and tables rather than in actual data. The syntax section begins with a discussion of nonverbal sentences, including those with copulas and nominals and adjectives serving as predicates. Word order scrambling in an NP is discussed. The section on complex sentences, including conjunctions and subordinate and relative clauses, is the most detailed of the book. This is directly followed by the most shallow section of the book, nine lines (including headings) of ‘discourse phenomena’. The editors are to be commended for including a well-glossed interlinear text, coauthored by the language consultant, Bekezela Ncube, to illustrate Ndebele as a whole. It is long enough to exemplify a variety of Ndebele structures. Numerous footnotes explain phenomena not discussed in the main text or places where an unpredicted pattern occurs. The book shows a lack of close editing in several areas. Besides typos, the authors report a five-way contrast in one place when only four are illustrated, they mislabel íntunɮe and ínɬanzɪ as a minimal pair, there are several subject-verb disagreements such as ‘Example are’, and there are missing references. It also suffers from numerous claimsmade without supporting evidence (one often wonders why one analysis was made rather than another) and what may be a tendency to try to fit Ndebele into European molds and terminology, as when the authors mention ‘case’ (they claim a ‘default case’ is used for subjects, objects, and indirect objects, but not for locatives). Still, Ndebele has very little documentation, especially compared to the related Zulu, and this work should be appreciated by scholars interested in languages of the region. Michael Cahill SIL International Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Relative clause formation in the Bantu languages of South Africa

This article discusses (verbal) relative clauses in the Bantu languages spoken in South Africa. The first part of the article offers a comparison of the relative clause formation strategies in Sotho, Tsonga, Nguni and Venda. An interesting difference between these language groups concerns the syntactic position and the agreement properties of the relative marker. Whereas the relative markers in Sotho, Tsonga and Venda are clause-initial elements, which express agreement with the head noun, the relative markers in the Nguni languages are relative concords, which are prefixed to the verb and agree with the subject of the relative clause. The second part of the article addresses this difference and shows that there is a historical relation between these two types of relative constructions. It is argued that earlier forms of Nguni employed relative markers similar to those used in present-day Sotho and Tsonga. In Nguni, these relative markers underwent a grammaticalisation process which turned them into relative concords. A detailed analysis of the syntactic conditions for, and the properties of, this grammaticalisation process leads to a hypothesis about the reasons why relative concords have developed in Nguni, but not (to the same extent) in Tsonga, Sotho and Venda.

The possible development of the Nguni locative prefixes e-o- /ke-/ la(yi)- ‘at, on, to, etc.’ from a demonstrative base la- / na-

In this paper, comparative data from a number of Nguni and other South Eastern Bantu languages are utilised to argue that the Nguni locative prefixes e-, o-, ke-, la- or layi-, expressing the general locative significance of ‘at. on, to, etc.’, probably originated from a demonstrative base that manifests as either la- or na-, depending on the language concerned. This paper shows how Wilkes' (1993) proposal that this prefix probably developed from a demonstrative base la-, could be amended to account for a wider range of data than he initially envisaged. The amended hypothesis as proposed in this paper, succeeds in accounting for the possible diachronic origin of the various manifestations of this prefix in all of the Nguni languages.

Genetic substructure in South African Bantu-speakers: evidence from autosomal DNA and Y-chromosome studies.

The extent of genetic differentiation between seven South African Bantu-speaking groups (Zulu, Xhosa, Tsonga/Shangaan, Southern Sotho, Pedi, Tswana, and Venda) was assessed from coancestry coefficients (F(ST)) estimated from autosomal serogenetic, DNA, and Y-chromosome DNA haplotypes. The overall F(ST) obtained from the autosomal data was 0.002, and that from the Y chromosome data was 0.014. The genetic relationships between groups examined were inferred from their cluster affinities in phylogenetic trees constructed from the genetic distances between them. Both autosomal and Y-chromosome DNA studies reveal that 6 of the 7 South African Bantu-speaking groups cluster according to their linguistic groupings, the exception being the Tsonga, who do not cluster with other Nguni language speakers, but rather with the Venda who live close to them. This suggests that the invading Shangaan-speakers, whose Nguni language was adopted by the Tsonga, did not have a major effect on the Tsonga gene pool, and that gene flow from the Venda into the Tsonga may have been considerable. Genetic distances were found to correlate with geographic distances between the regions where each group's apparent population density is the highest. Linguistic distances were also found to correlate with genetic distances, but linguistic and geographic distances showed no correlation. Together, these results suggest that linguistic and some genetic differentiation took place before the groups (or their forerunners) reached their present-day locations, and that further genetic change occurred after their arrival.

The palatalisation process in isiZulu revisited

Palatalisation is a linguistic process occurring in many languages. This process has been the subject of much debate. With reference to the Nguni languages, palatalisation has been discussed by, among others, Doke (1926), Herbert (1977), Khumalo (1987 & 1988) and Jokweni (1999). The afore-mentioned have explained the palatalisation process using morpho-phonological, derivational phonology and optimality theory frameworks. in this paper feature geometry theory will be invoked to offer a description of the palatalisation process in isiZulu.

Wetenskaplike woordidentifikasie en -klassifikasie in Bantoetale met besondere verwysing na Zoeloe

Scientific word identification and classification in Bantu languages with special reference to Zulu Despite the fact that Van Wyk’s word theory (1958) is the only scientifically justified word theory for Bantu languages, his work has not had the expected impact on the study of Bantu languages (especially the Nguni languages). This is partly due to the fact that his thesis was written in Afrikaans and is inaccessible to many Bantu language scholars. Secondly, this state of affairs is due to the fact that his treatise is highly theoretical and that the principles have not been applied exhaustively to Zulu or any of the other Nguni languages. Lombard et al.’s Northern Sotho grammar of 1985 is the only grammar written totally within the Van Wykian framework. The recognition of a word category “particle (word)” is probably the aspect that has had the most far-reaching consequences for a morphological and syntactical analysis of Bantu languages. The justification for distinguishing a word category “particle word” is examined in this article.

Fertility and Living Arrangements in South Africa

This paper investigates fertility among African women in South Africa. Variation in fertility levels is influenced by such factors as rural or urban residence, and level of education and household income. Differential fertility between women of different language groups is accounted for largely by underlying socio-economic factors. A further factor investigated by this paper is the impact of household structure on fertility in South Africa using the 1993 South Africa Living Standards and Development Study. Household structure is examined from the perspective of women. We focus on whether women live with a husband, or with relatives of their parents' generation, or with relatives of their own generation. The analysis concentrates on women aged twenty or over who are already mothers. For these women, we hypothesise that living arrangements mediate between their socio-economic and cultural characteristics and the number of children that they have borne. Living with relatives from the previous generation is found to have a negligible net impact on the lifetime fertility of mothers. However, women who live with relatives from their own generation have borne about a fifth fewer children than other women of the same age after controlling for the impact of household income, the woman's schooling, regional differentials and urban‐rural residence. Women from Nguni language groups have relatively large families. While this largely reflects economic and educational disadvantage, it is also conditional on their living arrangements. Unmarried and separated mothers have about a fifth fewer children than married mothers of the same age. It is within the domestic context that the influence of other characteristics is transmuted into differences in numbers of children. Women's living arrangements have become more diverse over the past thirty years in South Africa. They both modify and mediate the effects of other factors on fertility.

Language contact and language change—the case of Southern Transvaal Ndebele

Southern Transvaal Ndebele is one of the four officially recognised Nguni languages spoken in South Africa. It differs from the other Nguni languages in that it incorporates several atypical Nguni features in its lexicon, sound and grammatical system. The nature and possible origin of these changes are investigated in this paper. It is found that none of these changes resulted from any diachronic development in the language itself, but that they are foreign interferences that came about as a result of the areal contact between isiNdebele and the two neighbouring Sotho languages.