Inflectional features associated with verbs

A language’s inflectional categories are categories of morphosyntactic properties which are expressed in its inflectional system. Languages vary considerably in their inflectional categories (for example: gender, number, person tense and mood). Many languages exhibit gender and number as inherent inflectional categories on nouns. Gender is a category of morphosyntactic properties which distinguishes classes of nominal lexemes: for each such class of lexemes, there is a distinct set of inflectional markings for agreeing words (Gregory, 1998: 26). Number is a category of morphosyntactic properties used to distinguish the quantity to which a noun phrase refers. Many languages distinguish only two number properties (singular and plural); others additionally distinguish a dual (rarely a trial. In many languages, verbs inflected for person exhibit special subsidiary distinctions (which likewise tend to be expressed in pronominal inflection).

Verbs are generally inflected by prefixes for gender, number and person, while they are inflected by suffixes for past tense and mood (Kosch, 2006: 98). Some inflectional categories require simultaneous markers in prefixal and suffixal positions. As far as moods, tenses and aspects are concerned, some differences in classification and terminology may be observed in the grammatical descriptions of African linguists (Kosch, 2006).

Gender, number and person

According to Kosch (2006: 98), categories such as gender, number and person are copied from a noun or pronoun (which may be regarded as syntactically equivalent to a noun) onto the verb by means of agreement morphemes. In the examples below, gender, number and person are expressed simultaneously in the subject concords and the object concords, various classes, singular and third person.

• Class 1: u-mama u-thenga isonka. ‘Mother buys bread.’
• Class 1: umfama uya-zi-funa iigusha. ‘The farmer is looking for the sheep.’
• Class 7: isi-lumko si-cinga ukwenza imali. ‘The genius thinks of making money.’
• Class 7: isi-thethi siya-ba-thanda abantwana. ‘The speaker loves children.’
• Class 10: izi-ndlu zi-dulu kakhulu. ‘Houses are very expensive.’
• Class 10: izinja ziya-zi-zingela izilwanyana. ‘Dogs are hunting animals.’

Verbs may be inflected for number and person by means of plural agreement morphemes to mark respect:

• Sanibonani manene. ‘Hello gentlemen!’ second person plural, object concord -ni-

The verb may also be marked for number alone by means of a non-concordial suffix. Such a suffix is encountered in the imperative mood where it marks the property ‘plural’:

• Thethani. ‘speak!’ i.e. you, plural
• Hambani. ‘go!’ i.e., you, plural
• Vuyani. ‘be glad!’ i.e. you, plural

Tense has been defined as a ‘deictic category’ by Lyons (1968: 305) because it locates the time of the action, event, or state of affairs with reference to the time of utterance (the time of utterance being ‘now’). On the other hand, Comrie (1985: 9) sees tense as ‘grammaticalised location in time’ in terms of deictic centre relative to the present moment. The above definitions according to Hlongwane (1996: 46) refer to absolute tense that can be illustrated as follows:

• Tense locus:
  • Remote past > Immediate past > Present > Immediate future > Remote future

• Present Tense
  • Ordinary: ndiyahamba ‘I am going’
• Past Tense
  • Immediate: bahambile ‘they have gone’
  • Remote: bahamba ‘they left’
• Future Tense
  • Immediate: siza kuhamba ‘we shall go’

The time intervals are a continuum and sometimes idiosyncratic:

• sihambe kunyaka ophelileyo ‘we left last year’
• bahamba kunyaka ophelileyo ‘they left last year’

The above indicates that a tense form is not bound up with a particular time in a fixed way. A tense form is not always reserved for a particular time. For instance, a present form may be used to indicate future time as follows:

• ndihamba kunyaka ozayo ‘i am going next year’
• baza kufika ngoku ‘they will arrive now’
• bendicela uncedo ngoku ‘i was asking for help now’

Tense is the grammaticalised expression of location in tense (Pretorius et al., 2017: 170). It can be considered as the relationship between the form of the verb and the action or state it describes. In most Bantu languages, tense is lexicalised with the various time divisions marked by different independent morphemes.

Tense has to do with time relations as far as these are expressed by systematic grammatical contrasts. Traditionally a three -way opposition of ‘past’ ‘present’ and ‘future’ is recognised in relation to the moment of speaking. “Tense is an inflectional category because it rarely leads to any lexical distinctions (unpredictable semantic contents). Whether a verb is inflected to refer to an action in the past, to the present moment or to a future event, this does not change its lexical content.” (Kosch, 2006: 99).

IsiXhosa verb system

Oosthuysen (2016: 188) points out that “(T)he verb system of isiXhosa displays two primary or basic tenses. They are the imperfect, indicating a process that is in progress, and the perfect, indicating a process that has been completed giving rise to a subsequent situation that prevails.”

“In isiXhosa tense does not primarily reflect a line from past, present to future, as it does in some other languages. It depicts a circle from action to inaction, from event to result, from incomplete to complete, from imperfect to perfect.” (Oosthuysen, 2016: 188). He provides the following examples:

• The imperfect tense verb ndiyalamba ‘I suffer hunger’, as in:
  • Ndilihlwempu, ndiyalamba ‘I am a pauper; I suffer hunger.’
• The perfect tense verb ndilambile ‘I have completed becoming hungry; i.e. I am hungry’, as in:
  • Andikatyi; ndilambile ‘I have not yet eaten; I am hungry.’ (Oosthuysen 2016: 188).

Tense as a verb category

Tense is a category of the verb or auxiliary verb in isiXhosa, which is semantically associated with locating time distinctions in the morphological structure of the verb/auxiliary forms. It is usually marked by a formative or morpheme taken to be a marker for a particular tense. Examples of tense markers in isiXhosa are -ya-(present tense), -ile (past tense) and -za + ku (future tense) as in the following:

• Present Tense
  • Ndiyathetha. ‘I am speaking.’
  • Bayabhala. ‘They are writing.’
  • Uyasebenza. ‘He/she is working.’
• Past Tense
  • Ndithethile. ‘I spoke.’
  • Ndilindile. ‘I waited.’
  • Badlalile. ‘They played.’
• Future Tense
  • Siza kusebenza. ‘We shall work.’
  • Baza kuthetha. ‘They will speak.’
  • Uza kufika ngomso. ‘He/she will arrive tomorrow.’

Louwrens (1994: 118) states that Forsyth (1970), characterizes aspect as follows:

“The category of aspect indicates that the action expressed by the verb is presented (a) in its course, in process of performance, consequently in its duration or repetition (imperfective); as something restricted, concentrated at some limit of its performance, be it the moment of origin of its completion or result perfective (Forsyth, 1970: 3).”

Perfective and Imperfective aspects

As further explanation regards the concept of aspect, Kosch (2006: 100) points out that aspect entails the way in which an event is performed. It includes contrasts such as completed versus incomplete actions, habitual versus individual events, the beginning versus the continuation of events.

Actions which were completed in the past are described as perfective, while those still in progress or incomplete at the moment of speaking are known as imperfective (also ‘durative’). Perfective and imperfective aspects may not always correlate with the formal markings of tense in the verb forms (Kosch, 2006: 100) as in the following examples in (a) and (b):

1. Perfective aspect:
   • Umama unike umntwana isonka. ‘Mother gave the child bread.’
   • Umzali ufundise umntwana ukubulisa. ‘The parent taught the child to greet.’
2. Imperfective aspect:
   • Umfundi ufundile. ‘The student has read.’

In both (a) and (b) the verbs appear in the past tense forms, but their semantic implications differ. In (a) the actions have come to a definite end. They are completed and hence perfective. In (b) an action was started in the past and the result of the action still prevails at the moment of speaking, that is, the speaker has read and (hopefully) is still reading. Thus, the action or situation referred to by the verb expresses duration without specifying completion, thus imperfective.

Other aspects

Kosch (2006: 100) states that besides perfective and imperfective aspects, there are several other aspects which may be identified as inflectional categories in the African languages, for example, iterative aspect in which actions take place repeatedly. The verb stems are marked by -ezel- in isiXhosa:

• -bamba ‘catch’ > bambezela ‘restrain repeatedly, delay’

The persistence (progressive) aspect indicates that action is still in progress. It is semantically compatible with all three basic tenses:

• Present Tense
  • Amadoda asafuna inyama. ‘The men still want meat.’
• Future Tense
  • Amadoda aseza kufuna inyama. ‘The men will still want meat.’
• Past Tense
  • Iigusha zisalahlekile. ‘The sheep are still lost.’

From the above examples, it is noted that tenses and aspects are not mutually exclusive.

The term mood is traditionally restricted to a category expressed in verbal morphology. It is formally a morphosyntactic category of the verb like tense and aspect, even though its semantic function relates to the contents of the whole sentence. But traditionally its verbal nature is not in doubt. Mood is a term in the theoretical and descriptive study of sentence/clause types, and especially of the verbs they contain. It refers to a set of syntactic and semantic contrasts signalled by alternative paradigms of the verb, e.g. Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative. Semantically, a wide range of meanings is involved, especially attitudes on the part of the speaker towards the factual content of his utterance, e.g., uncertainty, definiteness, possibility. Syntactically these contrasts may be signalled by alternative inflectional forms of a verb or by using auxiliaries.

According to Kosch (2006: 102), the term mood is generally described and understood as referring to the different structural forms which verbs may assume to reflect a speaker or writer’s attitude towards an event. Inflectional morphology is mainly concerned with the first part of the above statement, namely the morphological (and phonological) structure of the verb (Kosch, 2006: 102). By ‘attitude’ is meant the way the speaker experiences and consequently conveys an event, for example, as a fact, request, command, probability or uncertainty (Kosch, 2006: 102). The term modality is used to describe such meanings of the verb, while the term mood is reserved for the structural contrast which are observed in the form of be restricted to moods only.

The moods and tenses of the predicative in isiXhosa have been divided up differently by various authors. The maximum number of moods that have been accepted by authors would seem to be as follows: the indicative, the imperative, the subjunctive, the infinitive, the participial, the subjunctive, the temporal, the conditional - potential, the contingent and the relative. Moods may be divided according to dependence/independent. Thus, we find independent moods, viz. the Indicative and the Imperative, the dependent moods, viz. Temporal, Infinitive, Participial, Imperative, Potential.

Review of the Mood

Mood identification in the African languages is constantly under review. There exists a great debate about moods and forms. Van Rooyen (1984) for example, takes mood as a feature of semantics. He subscribes to Gonda’s (1956: 6) definition of the mood that: “Mood is a means of intimating the speaker’s view or conception of the relation of the process expressed by the verb to reality”. The important word in this definition is reality (Van Rooyen, 1984: 74). The semantic content of the verb is measured against reality. If the speaker wants to indicate that the event is real, he makes use of a verb form which is said to be in the indicative. The Indicative is the mood of reality as per the following:

• Umntwana uyakhala. ‘The child is crying.’
• Indoda iqhuba imoto. ‘The man drives a car.’
• Unyana wam ufundela ubutitshala. ‘My son studies to be a teacher.’

A different view is suggested regarding the Subjunctive namely, that the speaker views the relation between the meaning of the verb and reality not as reality per se, but as visualised reality in that:

“The speaker views the process denoted by the verb as existing in his mind or before his mental eyes, or rather as not yet having a higher degree of being than mental existence. The Subjunctive, in other words, expresses visualization.” (Gonda, 1956: 69).

The second recognizable mood is the Imperative. In this mood the speaker intimates to his listener that the relation between the meaning expressed in the verb and reality is inevitable. Concomitant with this view of the speaker is the urgency with which the reality of the situation is to be realised.

The third recognised mood is the Indicative which is recognised as the mood of reality. Van Rooyen (1984) points out that the Indicative manifests itself in three forms:

• The principal form which carries tenses and aspect markers.
• The situative/participial which can be marked for aspect but not tense, and
• The narrative which carries neither aspect nor tense. (Van Rooyen, 1984: 82).

Based on the above discussion, focus will be on three less disputed moods, namely the subjunctive, imperative and the indicative, to illustrate a few points of more general theoretical interest regarding the structural patterns of the verb.

Subjunctive Mood

The present subjunctive indicates a sequential action in which case it occurs as the second or subsequent verb in a series, after a verb in the present or future tense (Davey, 1973: 99). The subjunctive mood may be used to express functions such as want, desire, purpose, commands, requests and consecutive actions (Kosch, 2006: 103). The subjunctive mood is not marked for tense, because it does not mark the time of the action. The subjunctive mood is signalled by the change of the final vowel of the verb stem to -e.

Basic structure: Subject concord + verb root + suffix -e:

• Bavula ucango bangene. ‘They open the door and enter.’
• Hlala phantsi ufunde. ‘Sit down and read.’
• Ndivuka ndihlambe. ‘I wake up and wash.’
• Ndiphakama ndihambe. ‘I stand up and go.’

Imperative Mood

This mood expresses commands and does not distinguish any tenses. The imperative mood is characterised by the absence of a subject concord. The verb stem ends on -a. A command directed at more than one person is marked by a suffix (ni) added to the verb stem.

• Basic structure: Root + Suffix -a:
  • Singular
    • Funda iincwadi! ‘Read the books!’
    • Lola imela! ‘Sharpen the knife!’
    • Mema uyihlo! ‘Invite your father!’
  • Plural
    • Yimbani! ‘Dig ye!’
    • Yivani! ‘Listen ye!’
    • Fundani! ‘Read ye!’

Indicative Mood

This is a principal mood in that it can occur in a sentence without need of an auxiliary or other verb to complete it. It is customary to posit the indicative (which indicates statements) as the ‘unmarked’ mood and then to describe peculiarities from the unmarked mood. The indicative mood distinguishes tenses and the form usually chosen as the reference structure is the form in the present tense.

The basic structure of the present tense:

• Basic structure: Subject concord -ya- Object concord – Root -a (Long form)

The long form occurs:

• When there is no adjunct following the verb
  • Iimpahla ziyathengiswa. ‘Clothes are being sold.’
  • Abantwana bayadlala. ‘The children are playing.’
  • Ndiyahamba. ‘I am leaving.’
• When the only adjunct is an object which is represented in the verb object concord
  • Isela liyaliba ihashe. ‘The thief steals the horse.’
  • Bayayifundisa inkwenkwe. ‘They teach the boy.’
• With an adjunct, in which case it has an emphatic or contrastive significance
  • Abantwana bayayimosha impahla, abayithengi. ‘The children ruin clothes because they do not buy it.’
  • Ndiyalala ebhedini andihlali. ‘I lie on the bed, I do not sit on it.’

Voice is a morphological category marked on the verb which allows changes of focus by making different arguments of the verb. The best-known grammatical voices are active and passive voice. Voice specifies the relation of the subject to the action expressed by the verb. When the subject performs the action expressed by the verb, the verb will appear in the active form. When the subject undergoes the action expressed by the verb, the verb will be inflected to indicate the passive form and may be followed by an agentive marker and an agent.

Passive voice is therefore expressed by a mixture of morphology and syntax in the Bantu languages. The regular passive suffix -w- is generally placed just before the terminative vowel of the verb stem. It has no lexical significance:

• Active
  • Umntwana uvula ucango. ‘The child opens the door.’
  • Umama usika inyama. ‘Mother cuts meat.’
  • Utitshala ufundisa abafundi. ‘The teacher teaches children.’
• Passive
  • Ucango luvulwa ngumntwana. ‘The door is opened by the child.’
  • Inyama isikwa ngumama. ‘Meat is being cut by mother.’
  • Abafundi bafundiswa ngutitshala. ‘Students are taught by the teacher.’

As a result of the affixation of the passive suffix, various phonological modifications (in which the original passive suffix may no longer be recognised) may be observed under specified conditions:

• Active
  • Umntwana ukhaba ibhola. ‘The child kicks a ball.’
  • Umama unyibilikisa umkhenckce. ‘Mother dissolves ice.’
  • Umalusi ubophelela inkomo. ‘The shepherd ties the cow.’
  • iCovid ibhubhisa isizwe. ‘Covid kills the nation.’
• Passive
  • Ibhola ikhatywa ngumntwana. ‘The ball is kicked by the children.’
  • Umkhenkce unyityilikiswa ngumama. ‘Ice is dissolved by mother.’
  • Inkomo ibotshelelwa ngumalusi. ‘The cow is tied by the shepherd.’
  • Sizwe sibhujiswa yiCovid. ‘The nation is killed by Covid.’

In isiXhosa a third voice is distinguished, namely a middle voice (Kosch, 2006: 105). Verbs are inflected to indicate that the subject is simultaneously actor and undergoer of an action. In Bantu languages this is referred to as the reflexive morpheme -zi:

• Active
  • Umntwana utya ukutya. ‘The child eats food.’
  • Umfundisi uthwala umnqwazi. ‘The priest puts on a hat.’
  • uSipho unxiba ibhatyi. ‘Sipho wears a jacket.’
• Middle
  • Umntwana uyazityisa ukutya. ‘The child feeds itself.’
  • Umfundisi uzithwalisa umnqwazi. ‘The priest wears by himself a hat.’
  • uSipho uzinxibisa ibhatyi. ‘Sipho dresses himself a jacket.’

Causative suffix

The causative indicates that someone or something is causing an action to occur or assisting in the execution thereof. Syntactically, the inclusion of the suffix -is- in the verb can increase by one the number of objects which the verb may take, as in the following:

• Indoda ibona indlela. ‘The man sees the road.’
• Indoda ibonisa umhambi indlela. ‘The man shows the man the road.’
• Umama ungena endlwini. ‘Mother enters the house.’
• Umama ungenisa abantwana endlwini. ‘Mother leads the children into the house.’
• Amafama avuna umbona. ‘Farmers harvest mealies.’
• Abasebenzi bavunisa amafama umbona. ‘Workers assist the farmers in harvesting mealies.’

Applicative suffix

The applicative suffix -el- indicates that the action is applied on behalf of, towards or with regard to some object. In other words, it is used to indicate that an action is carried out on behalf of, for the benefit of, or to the detriment of someone or something. It may also indicate movement in the direction of a place, thing, or person. The applicative suffix can increase the number of objects which the verb can take.

• Umakhi wakha indlu. ‘The builder builds a house.’
• Umakhi wakhela indoda indlu. ‘The builder builds a house for the man.’
• Ndenza isidlo. ‘I am preparing a meal.’
• Ndenzela umama isidlo. ‘I am preparing a meal for my mother.’

The causative and the applicative display characteristics of inflectional morphology, in so far as they are very productive; that is, these suffixes can be affixed to most verb roots with predictable connotations added to them.

Polarity involves the distinction between positive (affirmative) and negative verb forms. The positive form has no clearly identifiable overt affixal marking. Only the negative form is marked overtly (Kosch, 2006: 106).

Every mood and tense has its own negativizing strategy. The most common strategy is by means of one or more prefixes in conjunction with a change in the final suffix of the verb stem. The subject concords of the first and second persons of class 1/1a are particularly known for taking on a special form in negation in many of the Bantu languages. The so-called present tense morpheme, which is only encountered in the present tense of the indicative mood, is deleted in the negative form.

• Positive: subject concord + -ya – (object concord) – Root -a
  • Ndiyahamba. ‘I am leaving.’
  • Bayambona. ‘They see him/her.’
  • Siyasithetha. ‘We speak it.’
• Negative: a –subject concord - (object concord) - Root -i
  • Andibhali. ‘I am not writing.’
  • Abamboni. ‘They do not see him/her.’
  • Andizihlambi. ‘I do not wash them.’

Subjunctive mood

• Positive: subject concord – (object concord) -root -e
  • Bafuna ukuba sitye. ‘They want us to eat.’
  • Ufika atye alale, akugqiba. ‘He/she comes, eat and sleep when finishes.’
  • Utitshala ufuna sibhale. ‘Teacher wants us to write.’
• Negative: subject concord -nga (object concord) - root -i
  • Masingabhali ebhodini. ‘Let us not write on the board.’
  • Ungathethi. ‘Do not talk.’

Reciprocal suffix

On the syntactic level, the effect of the reciprocal suffix -an-, is that it reduces by one the number of noun phrases which the verb can support. The reciprocal verb appears with one subject noun phrase which is plural in number. Compare the non-reciprocal with the reciprocal form in the following:

• Non-reciprocal
  • Umfana ufundisa umntwana ileta. ‘The young man gives the child a letter to read.’
• With reciprocal suffix -an-
  • Umfana nomntwana bafundisana ileta ‘The young man and the child let each other read the letter.’

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