Sotho Grammar - Typology

Typology

The Sotho language may be described in several ways depending on the aspect being considered.

• It is an agglutinative language. It constructs whole words by joining together 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).