Parts of Speech
Each complete Sesotho word belongs to some part of speech.
In form, some parts of speech (adjectives, enumeratives, some relatives, and all verbs) are radical stems, which need affixes to form meaningful words; others (possessives and copulatives) are formed from full words by the employment of certain formatives; the rest (nouns, pronouns, adverbs, ideophones, conjunctives, and interjectives) are complete words themselves, which may or may not be modified with affixes to form new words.
The difference between the four types of qualificatives is merely in the concords used to associate them with the noun or pronoun they qualify. Since the simplest copulatives do not use any verbs whatsoever (zero copula), entire predicative sentences in Sesotho may be formed without the use of verbs.
Read more about this topic: Sotho Grammar
Famous quotes containing the words parts of, parts and/or speech:
“Three parts of him
Is ours already, and the man entire
Upon the next encounter yields him ours.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof—that’s a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Good speech need not be behind other’s backs; speech behind other’s backs is not good.”
—Chinese proverb.