Inflection

The agglutinative nature of Setswana words where numerous morphemes could be included in words to achieve the desired meaning, makes it imperative to understand the word formation processes of the language. The productive morphology of nouns and specifically verbs where morphemes are concatenated into a word are relevant here. We follow the view that word formation in Setswana starts from the most basic form of the word, the lemma and that more complex words are created through affixation. This approach is in line with the function of morphology which is to throw light on the structure of established words but also on freshly coined neologisms (Katamba, 1993: 65). Generally accepted categories of inflection do not account for all affixes available in the structures of Setswana nouns and verbs. This topic thus attempts to treat generally accepted categories of inflection with reference to the relevant affixes pertaining to Setswana nouns and verbs. As the derivation of nouns was treated in Topic 3 (refer to 3.8) the focus is on the inflectional features related to nouns and verbs in this topic. For further reading, Brits (2006) discusses lemmatisation in Setswana.

What is inflection

Katamba (1993: 205) explains that the “standard intuition among linguists is that inflectional morphology is concerned with syntactically driven word formation”. He describes the difference between inflection and derivation as follows: “Inflectional morphology deals with syntactically determined affixation processes while derivational morphology is used to create new lexical items”.

Morphemes contribute to the meaning of the word. Root morphemes are often referred to as lexical morphemes (Kosch, 2006: 84). They are the compulsory/inomissible morpheme in every word as they carry the core meaning of the word. Refer to Kosch (2006: 84) for a more detailed exposition.Affixes also contribute to the lexical value of the word in that they add a grammatical value to the word – they are sometimes referred to as grammatical morphemes. Inflection is concerned with the value that is added to or inflected into the word by affixes. Inflection refers to the morphological process where an affix which contributes a grammatical category/value is added to a word. It is thus the “morphological marking of properties on words” (Booij, 2015). Inflection results in more than one form of a word. The change in form must comply with the grammatical rules of the language.

In describing the inflectional system of a language, the terms ‘category’ and ‘property’ (Kosch, 2006: 88) or ‘feature’ and ‘value’ are used: one can speak of the category number with the properties singular and plural, or the feature Number with the (feature) values singular and plural (Booij, 2015). The terms Feature > value are used to indicate the inflectional categories for Setswana in the table below. Berg (2018: 35-37) indicates that the term attribute is used in Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) to refer to grammatical functions or features.

The inflection of nominal elements (nouns, pronouns and adjectives) was traditionally called declension while the inflectional features that are typically linked to nominal elements are gender, number, person and case (Kosch, 2006: 88). The commonest inherent categories of nouns are number and class/gender (Katamba, 1993: 233). Setswana nouns are marked for the following features.

Class gender

The term gender refers to grammatical gender in Setswana, not biological/sex gender. Grammatical gender in the Bantu languages is referred to as class gender and refers to the noun class to which a noun belongs and is characteristic of the grouping of nouns into noun classes which are grammatically significant. Noun classes are discussed in Topic 3 (3.2 - 3.4). Kosch (2006: 89-90) gives an exposition of grammatical gender or so-called class gender. It does not refer to the gender categories of masculine, feminine or neuter (neither masculine or feminine) as is the case in classical European languages.

Even though biological gender is irrelevant in the class gender system, objects seem to have been classified into groups based on semantic considerations such as animate or inanimate, shape and size. Traces of this are still apparent: Class 1 and 2 signify human beings; 7 and 8 expert human beings (among several other items); 9 and 10 animate beings and inanimate objects and 14 abstract nouns. Sex reference (he/him/his as opposed to she/her/hers) is absent in agreement morphemes as well as in personal pronouns where both sexes can be referred to with the same agreement morpheme or pronoun

Number

Number in general refers to quantity. In grammar it refers to the difference between 'one' and 'multiple' labelled as singular (sg) and plural (pl). The prefixes of nouns classes mark both singularity and plurality in Setswana which is different to languages such as English and Afrikaans where only plural is marked overtly. Uneven classes up to class 9 (1, 3, 5, 7 and 9) generally express singular while even classes (2, 4, 6, 8 and 10) generally express plural. The plural form of nouns in noun classes beyond noun class 10 is more arbitrary while the plural form of some mass and abstract nouns may express a more specific significance. Agreement morphemes (subject and object agreement morphemes) indicate the number of the nouns they agree with as subject noun or descriptive adjunct. Possessive and qualificative particles as well as pronouns are also marked for number.

Person

Participants in speech situations are generally referred as persons with the first person being the speaker, the second person being the person spoken to and the third person being persons or things other than the speaker and the person spoken to/the hearer. The feature of person is always expressed simultaneously with the feature of number. Consider the following absolute pronouns:

It has become customary in the Bantu languages to refer to person (personal pronouns) in the case of the first and second person only and to speak of noun classes in the case of the third person. The absolute pronouns of the noun classes all represent the grammatical value of third person.

Case

Case inflection is evident in the fusional languages but there are very faint traces thereof in the Bantu languages. Kosch (2006: 95-98) discusses the traces of case inflection in IsiZulu and Sepedi. Kosch (2006: 98) explains that: “In the early documentations of African language grammar by European missionaries, attempts were made to draw parallels between case inflections of forms in the European languages and in the African languages. The results were not very rewarding, since words in the African languages do not display inflectional paradigms which would even warrant the recognition of cases as they are known traditionally. The African languages usually mark syntactic relations by means of word order and affixation rather than internal modifications of words. It is therefore a rather futile and artificial exercise to distinguish cases for these languages”. Detail of the traces of case inflection in Setswana is feeble and therefore not treated here.

Setswana verbs like the verbs of most languages show the greatest morphological complexity of all word classes. The inflection of verbal elements was traditionally referred to as conjugation. Katamba (1993: 220) indicates that verbs may be inflected for tense, aspect, mood and conjugation classes which all add further specification to the event, process, state or action of the verb which he refers to as predication. The features of the verb are referred to by some grammarians as grammatical categories and are intertwined to the extent that when one is interfered with it has an influence on the others. Posthumus (1994) refers to the grammatical categories of the verb as a cobweb when he discusses the categories of the Zulu verb. Posthumus (1993: 95) defines the essential categories of the verb in IsiZulu as “those characteristics of the verb which are necessarily inherently present in every verb regardless of the simplicity or complexity of the morphological structure of such a verb. These characteristics which govern the semantic-syntactic usage of the verb are morphologically and phonologically marked within the verb form”.

For Setswana, the categories of mood, tense, aspect, and actuality/polarity (positive and negative) are identified as the essential categories/features of the verb. The morphological marking of the different categories in the verb is as follows:

• Mood and tense are marked by the subject agreement morpheme and the categorial verbal ending.
• Aspect is marked by the progressive prefixal morpheme -sa-, the imperfective/present tense morpheme -a-, and the perfective suffix -ilê.
• Actuality is marked by the presence or absence of negative morphemes.

The hierarchy of the four essential verbal categories as be presented as:

[click image to enlarge]

In Setswana verbal prefixes generally inflect for gender, number and person while the subject agreement morpheme, suffixes and the verbal ending inflect for tense and mood. The plural in imperatives, hortative and optative moods e.g., A re tsamayeng. ‘Let us go.’; Tsamayang! ‘Go!/Leave!’ can be mention here as explained later on. In some instances, a prefix and suffix are required to appear simultaneously to convey the inflectional category/feature. The descriptions of some moods, tenses and aspects differ regarding their classification and terminology in the grammars on Bantu languages in general and in Southern Bantu and the Sotho group in particular.

Gender, number and person

The features of gender, number and person are inflected in the verb from a nominal element (noun or pronoun) via an agreement morpheme (subject or object agreement morpheme).

The subject agreement morpheme in (3) inflects class gender 1 which indicates a singular value for number.

The object agreement morpheme in (4) inflects class gender 10 which indicates a plural value for number.

Respect may be indicated toward the addressee by referring to him/her in the plural (5). Note that the descriptive copulative verb (‘DesCopVP2pl’) here has the same form as the subject agreement morpheme (‘AgrSubjP2pl’).

In the imperative mood a suffix which does not indicate agreement is used to indicate plural value for the number feature (6). The suffix -ng indicates that the command is given to more than one person.

The suffix -ng may also be used with verbs in the subjunctive mood when preceded by a hortative particle (7).

Tense

Tense is a deictic category which relates the time of the action, event or state of affairs (referred to as E.T. - event time) to the time of the utterance (referred to as C.T. - coding time). Tenses are divided into the categories of absolute and relative tenses on the basis of the point in time which is referred to in the verb or verbal group. In the absolute tenses C.T. coincides with the deictic centre and constitutes the point from which utterances are interpreted. In the relative tenses the reference point from which the temporal semantic interpretations are made, is not C.T. but a point referred to by an auxiliary verb. Relative tenses thus express a relation between event time, reference time and coding time.

Even though tenses are marked by different morphemes tense marking does not bring about lexical distinctions. Tense is therefore seen as inflectional category. Consider the absolute tenses in examples (8) to (10).

Aspect

Aspect deals with the non-deictic temporal structure of events and situations as expressed in grammatical constructions and lexical items, verbs in particular (Conradie, 2020). Aspect conveys the internal temporal structure of actions also referred to as the duration of an action in a verb (Posthumus, 1993: 188; Louwrens, 1994: 139; Berg, 2018: 65). It is sometimes expressed as the manner of duration and translated as aksionsart. Aspect is not marked overtly in all verbs in Setswana and has to be identified on semantic distinction in some cases. Aspectual distinctions only appear in moods that have tenses. Perfective, progressive and persistive aspect are identified in Setswana.

Perfective aspect refers to a completed action:

Progressive aspect refers to an action that is in progress/ongoing at the moment of speech (12).

Persistive aspect “affirms that a situation has held continuously since an implicit or explicit point in the past up to the time of speaking” (Nurse, 2008: 145). It is implied that the action has started some time prior to speech time. The persistive is marked by the auxiliary verbs ntse ‘have been’ or santse ‘still’ (cf. Berg, 2018: 65-66):

The identification and description of moods in the Bantu languages is considered continuously and different views exist on the matter. Posthumus (1993: 95) asserts that mood “is that characteristic morphologically and phonologically marked form of the verb which portrays the semantic-syntactic usage of such a verb” and the semantic-syntactic usage “is the usage of the verb in a particular type of independent or dependent word group or sentence”. Kosch (2006: 102) indicates that mood “is generally described and understood as referring to the different structural forms which verbs may assume in order to reflect a speaker or writer’s attitude towards an event”. Inflectional morphology is concerned with the first part of the definition viz. the structural form of the verb in this regard.

The term modality is used to describe the attitude of the speaker viz. the way in which the speaker experiences and then conveys an event as either a fact, request, command, probability or uncertainty.

A distinction between dependent and independent moods based on the syntactic and discourse features of verbs is often drawn:

• The independent moods are the indicative, consecutive, imperative and habitual.
• The dependent moods are the situative (participial), subjunctive, infinitive and relative.

The verbs in these dependent moods are semantically and syntactically dependent and therefore act as subordinate members in complex sentences.

To reiterate the difference in the views of scholars, the opinion of Louwrens (1995: 168) can be cited: “… whereas the consecutive is a perfective aspect of the indicative which denotes completed sequences of events, the habitual constitutes an imperfective aspect of the indicative which expresses sequential actions which are carried out as a habit”.

A detailed discussion of the different moods with their temporal and aspectual varieties is not attempted here. Refer to relevant research papers and sections in authoritative grammars. Possible examples include Pretorius (1997), Krüger (2006 & 2013) and Berg (2018) among others. Examples from less disputed moods are considered to indicate the structural patterns mentioned. In analogy to Kosch (2006: 102) who uses the indicative mood which is often referred to as the “unmarked mood” as a basis to indicate the idiosyncrasies of other moods, the same method is followed here for Setswana.

Indicative mood

The verb in the indicative mood expresses factual statements and may be marked for tenses. It requires a subject agreement morpheme. The basic morphological structure of verbs in the indicative mood is:

subject agreement morpheme + (present tense morpheme -a) + (object agreement morpheme) + verb root + verbal ending -a ((14) to (16)).

Imperative mood

The verb in the imperative mood expresses commands. It cannot be marked for tense. It has the following basic morphological structure: verb root + verbal ending -a

The verbal ending changes to -e when and object agreement morpheme is included:

A suffix -ng is added when the command is directed at more than one person:

In monosyllabic stems such as ja ‘eat’, an -a may be added to the stem (20). The vowel <-e> may also be prefixed to monosyllanic stems (see 21). Kosch (2006: 103) refers to these morphemes as stabilisers.

There is a variant form –ya that is sometimes used: Jaya!

Subjunctive mood

The subjunctive mood may express actions such as want, desire, purpose, commands, requests and consecutive actions. It is often used with the particle gore ‘so that’, or ‘in order to’ and is not marked for tense. The basic morphological structure is: subject agreement morpheme + verb root + verbal ending -ê.

The subject agreement morphemes of classes 1 and 1a change from -o to -a. As a dependent verb the subordinate clause may follow the following clauses ((22) to (24)):

• Indicative
  Example 22

  Ke batla gore o nthuse.

  ke- batl- a gore o- n- thus- e

  AgrSubjP1sg- want- VEnd Conj AgrSubjP2sg- AgrObjP1sg- help- VEnd

  I want you to help me.

  A command to more than one person, the plural form requires the verbal ending –ng:

  Example 23

  Ke batla gore lo nthuseng.

  ke- batl -a gore lo- n- thus -e- ng

  AgrSubjP1sg- want- VEnd Conj AgrSubjP2pl- AgrObjP1sg- help- VEnd-VEnd

  I want you (plural) to help me.

• Imperative
  Example 24

  Tsena, o nthuse!

  Tsen -a o- n- thus- e

  come in- VEnd AgrSubjP2sg- AgrObjP1sg- help- VEnd

  Come in and help me!

  A hortative particle can also be included as in (24):

  Example 25

  A ke bone.

  a ke- bon- e

  HortPart AgrSubjP1sg- see- VEnd

  Let me see.

The expression of grammatical relations is encoded using syntax and morphology and can be realised in a variety of ways (Katamba, 2003: 267). When the subject performs the action that is expressed by the verb the verb appears in the active form (active voice) (25). When the subject undergoes the action that is expressed by the verb the verb appears in the passive form (passive voice) (26). The arguments in the passive sentence are thus re-ordered.

Passive voice is also expressed by marking the verb with the passive suffix -iw- or -w-. A passive verb is valency reducing, as the object (OBJ) in the active sentence changes to the subject (SUBJ) in the passive sentence. The SUBJ of the active sentence functions as the complement of the agentative particle ke ‘by’. The transitivity of the verb is reduced by the passive suffix. While o reka ‘he buys’ in (25) is transitive o rekiwa ‘it is bought’ in (26) is intransitive.

Refer to Berg (2018: 79-80) for a discussion on the mapping of thematic roles in passive sentences.

Polarity

Morphemes in the verb indicate that it is positive or negative. This status is referred to as polarity in grammars. Positive polarity is indicated by and absence of negative prefixes and the optional presence of the verbal ending ‑a.

In (28) positive polarity (present tense, indicative) is indicated by the present tense prefix -a- and the verbal ending -a.

In (29) positive polarity (present tense, indicative) is indicated with the verbal ending -a.

In very rare roots such as <r-> (stem re ‘say’) and <its-> (stem itse ‘know’) the verbal ending -e is used in the positive. Such stems are labelled as defective stems (Pretorius, 1997: 26).

The negative prefixes ga-, sa-, and se- and the verbal ending -e indicate negative polarity ((30) to (32)).

In (30) negative polarity is indicated by the negative prefix ga- and the verbal ending -e.

In (31) negative polarity is indicated by the negative prefix sa- and the verbal ending -e.

In (32) negative polarity is indicated by the negative prefix se- and the verbal ending -e.

As in the positive a command to more than one person, the plural form requires the verbal ending –ng:

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