Note: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 Sotho orthography. This article presents a brief overview of the grammar of the Sesotho language and provides links to more detailed articles.
Typology
The Sesotho language may be described in several ways depending on the aspect being considered. It is an agglutinative language. It constructs whole words by joining discrete roots and morphemes with specific meanings, and may also modify words by similar processes. Its basic word order is SVO. However, because the verb is marked with the subject and sometimes the object, this order may be changed to emphasise certain parts of the predicate. It is a tonal language; more specifically, a complex grammatical tone language. See Sotho tonology. It has no grammatical case marking on the noun. Nominal roles are indicated by a combination of word order and agreement markers on the verb, with no change to the nouns themselves. It has a complex grammatical gender system, but this does not include natural gender. See Sotho nouns. It has head-first order, though it may be changed for emphasis. If an inflected qualificative is placed before the head, then it is technically a qualificative pronoun. It is a pro-drop language. Verbs may be used without explicitly specifying the subject or the object with substantives (nouns or pronouns).
Formatives
Bantu languages are agglutinative — words are constructed by combining discrete formatives (a.k.a. "morphemes") according to specific rules, and sentences are constructed by stringing together words according to somewhat less strict rules. Formatives alone cannot constitute words; formatives are the component parts of words.
These formatives may be classed generally into roots, stems, prefixes, concords, suffixes, verbal auxiliaries, enclitics, and proclitics.
Roots are the most basic irreducible elements of words and are immutable (except under purely phonetic changes). Entire words are built from roots by affixing other formatives around the root as appendages;Bantuists do it with multiple appendages. every word (except contractions and compounds) contains exactly one root, from which it derives its most basic meaning (though, technically speaking, the root by itself does not really have any meaning). Roots are the basis of the Sotho parts of speech.
The following words: ho ruta ('to teach') ba le rutile ('they taught you [pl]') re a rutana ('we teach one another') ha ba le rutisise ('they do not teach you [pl.] properly') morutehi ('an academic') thuto ('education') moithuti ('learner') are all formed from the root -rut-.
Although in some cases various phonetic processes may ultimately change the root's form in predictable ways (such as the nasalization in the last two examples above) the root itself is considered to be unchanged.
There can be no doubt that words never emerged simply as roots. The root is a dead thing — the study of roots is primarily to aid the compilation of dictionaries, to further the study of comparative Bantu linguistics, and to help trace the evolution and connections of different languages. Many roots are shared by a wide range of Bantu languages.Including the root *-ntu whence the name "Bantu languages" comes.
Current work on Proto-Bantu has it that no true roots began with prenasalized consonants, and that the form of this root was actually *-jîntu, as in *mu-jîntu and *ba-jîntu.
Some further examples of roots: -tho (Proto-Bantu *-jîntu) ⇒ motho ('Bantu-speaking person'), botho ('Ubuntu') -itsi (Proto-Bantu *-jîgî) ⇒ metsi ('water') (note the vowel coalescence: class 6 ma- + i ⇒ me-) -rwa (Proto-Bantu *-tua) ⇒ morwa ('a Khoisan person'), Borwa ('South') -j- (Proto-Bantu *-di-) ⇒ ho ja ('to eat'), dijo ('food'), sejeso ('a magical poison') -holo (Proto-Bantu *-kudu) ⇒ -holo ('large'), boholo ('size'), lekgolo ('one hundred'), moholo ('an older person'), moholwane ('elder brother') -rithi ⇒ morithi ('shade'), serithi ('human spirit') -re (Proto-Bantu *-ti) ⇒ ho re ('to say') -dimo (Proto-Bantu *-dîmu) ⇒ Modimo ('God') (traditionally never used in the pluralAlthough there has historically always been a general belief among Westerners that African religions are polytheist, the plural of this word — medimo — was specifically invented by Christian missionaries to aid in translating the Bible (which regularly speaks of "gods" — a concept foreign to Sesotho ATR).
Additionally, the noun is traditionally in class 1, but is used in class 3 by Christians and the Bible. There is, and has never been, any confusion among Basotho that the class 2 Badimo may be the plural of the class 1 Modimo since, in the same way that Modimo was never used in the plural, Badimo is never used in the singular (an ancestor is referred to as "one of the ancestors").), Badimo ('ancestors') (does not exist in the singular), Bodimo ('African Traditional Religion'), ledimo ('cannibal'), Dimo (the name of an ogre character) -edi (Proto-Bantu *-jedî) ⇒ ngwedi ('moon'), kgwedi ('month') -ja (Proto-Bantu *-bua) ⇒ ntja ('dog') -hlano (Proto-Bantu ) ⇒ -hlano ('five')
Note that although it is often true that the common root of a number of words may be defined as having some inherent meaning, very often the connection between words sharing common roots is tentative, and this is further evidence that prefix-less noun roots and stems are ultimately meaningless. Roots from a common source help to connect nouns with certain meanings, and often the class prefixes are merely incidental. bosiu ('night'), and tshiu ('24-hour day') leloko ('family/lineage/clan'), and moloko ('generation') boroko ('sleep'), and dithoko ('rheum') boko ('brain matter'), and moko ('bone marrow')
Stems are not much different from roots, and the difference between them is fairly arbitrary. Though all roots are also stems, stems often include derivational suffixes, which roots never include. Additionally, the ending -a is included in the verb stem but not in the root (if it was truly part of the core root then it wouldn't be replaced in verb derivations and conjugations).
For example, from the verb root -rar- one may derive several words, including the following (stems in bold): ho ('to entangle') mo (nom. 3) ('grapes') le (nom. 5) ('a single grape') ho ('to solve') ho (ass. vb.) ('to be entangled together') ho (app. ass. vb.) ('to spiral') ho (recip. vb.) ('to entangle each other') ma (nom. rel.) ('entangled') ho (app. vb.) ('to twist') ho (rev. vb.) ('to untangle') (nom. 9; pl. 10 di-) ('solution')
These may all be listed under the same headword in a dictionary.
Note how, in the above example, not only do many of the words have slightly unexpected or expanded meanings, but the form ho rarabolla uses an irregular derivation pattern.
Prefixes are affixes attached to the fronts of words (noun class prefixes are called such by convention, even though bare roots are not independent words). These are distinct from concords, since changing the prefix of a word may radically alter its meaning, while changing the concord attached to a stem does not change that stem's meaning.
Ke lenaneo ('it is a programme')
Concords are similar to prefixes in that they appear before the word stem. Verbs and qualificatives used to describe a noun are brought into agreement with that noun by using the appropriate concords.
There are seven basic types of concords in Sesotho. In addition, there are two immutable prefixes used with verbs that function similarly to concords.
Ba tla e rala ('they shall design it')
Suffixes
There are numerous suffixes in Sesotho serving varied functions. For example, verbs may be derived from other verbs through the employment of several verbal suffixes. Diminutives, augmentatives, and locatives may all be derived from nouns through the use of several suffixes. Most suffixes, except the noun locative suffix and verb inflexional suffixes, are derivational and create new stems.
Strictly speaking the final vowel -a in verb stems is a suffix, as it is often regularly replaced by other vowels in the derivation and inflexion of verbs and nouns.
Ha a a bua nyeweng ('she did not speak at the court trial')
Verbal auxiliaries are not to be confused with auxiliary verbs or deficient verbs. They may appear as prefixes or as infixes. Basically, all formatives that may be affixed to the verb root, excluding suffixes and the objectival and subjectival concords, are verbal auxiliaries.
These include prefixes such as ha- used to negate verbs, and infixes such as -ka- used to form potential tenses.
The infix -a- used to form the past subjunctive (not to be confused with the infix -a- used to form the present indicative positive and the perfect indicative negative; and also used as a "focus marker") merges with the subjectival concord resulting in what is often termed the "auxiliary concord."
Ke a tla ('I am coming') Ha ke no tla ('I shall not come')
Infix verbal auxiliaries may be further divided into simple infixes and verbal infixes. The main difference lies in the fact that, when forming the relative construction (participial sub-mood) of a verbal complex employing the infix, the verbal infixes may be detached from the main verb and carry the -ng suffix with the main verb converted to an infinitive object,This is exactly the same as the behaviour of deficient verbs, and it is very likely that these infixes are grammaticalized contractions using originally Group VI deficient verbs. Additionally, in the negative (and sometimes in the positive) these infixes change to a form ending in the vowel , which obviously comes from some coalescence with the vowel (in the infinitive prefix ho-) and the vowel of the original deficient verb ( or in the positive, and in the negative).
A possible (pre-contraction and grammaticalization) example would be: (pre-)Proto-Sotho–Tswana * ('I come to/shall eat'), * ('I do not come to/shall not eat'), which in modern Sesotho appear as Ke tla ja, and Ha ke tlo ja while a verb using a simple infix has to carry the suffix itself.
Ba ka bona ('they might see') (simple infix used) ⇒ Ba ka bonang ('those who might see') Ba tla bona ('they shall see') (verbal infix used) ⇒ Ba tlang ho bona ('those who shall see')
Enclitics (leaning-on words) are usually suffixed to verbs and convey a definite meaning. They were probably once separate words.
They may be divided into two categories: those that draw forward the stress (as normal suffixes), and those that don't alter the word's stress. The second type may result in words that don't have the stress on the penult (as is usual with Sesotho words).
Ha a sa le yo ('he is no longer there') (stress on the penult) Thola bo! ('please keep quiet!') (stress on the antepenultimate syllable)
Proclitics are clitics that appear at the fronts of words. There is only one regular proclitic in Sesotho — le- — which is normally prefixed to nouns, pronouns, qualificatives, and adverbs as a conjunction, to convey the same meaning as English "and" when used between substantives. Some Indo-European languages have a post-clitic with a similar meaning (for example Latin -queSenatus Populusque Romanus. and Sanskrit च -ca).
It may also be used to express the idea of "together with" and "even."
Ntate le mme ('my father and mother') Ke kopane le yena ('I met with her') Le bona ha ba kgolwe ('Even they do not believe')
There are also a number of curious utterances where the proclitic is used to express emphatic negatives.
Le kgale ('Never', lit. 'And a long time') Le letho ('Nothing', lit. 'And something') Le ho ka ('Never', lit. 'And to be able')
This is similar to the use of the Latin "et" ('and') to mean "even" or "not", as in the supposed last words of Caesar – "Et tu, Brute?" meaning "Not (or even) you Brutus?".
The Sesotho word