Sotho Concords - Concord Types

Concord Types

There are seven basic sets of concords. Each noun class has concords in each set, and the first and second persons have unique concords in some of the sets (the third person uses the class 1 and 2 concords). The exact number of concords differs from language to language, but all Bantu languages have at least the subjectival and objectival concords.

In form, the concords closely resemble the class prefixes, and it is not unreasonable to assume that originally the other parts of speech were made to agree with the noun by simply prefixing them with the noun's class prefix. Today, in Sesotho, the vowels and consonants of the prefixes have been modified slightly in largely predictable ways.

In addition to these seven concords, there are two further immutable concord-like prefixes used in certain situations with verbs.

Sesotho is a pro-drop language in that in most situations separate words (such as absolute pronouns) do not need to be used with verbs to indicate the subject and object (they may be inferred from the subjectival and objectival concords).

Notes on the tables:

1. means that nasalization will occur, with the syllabic nasal appearing only for monosyllabic stems. N means that the syllabic nasal will always appear.
2. "Class 1(a)" means class 1 and class 1a, while "class 2(a)" means class 2 and class 2a. Either group uses exactly the same concords, differing only in the class prefix and content.
3. All the locative classes (classes 16, 17, and 18) use the same concords, which resemble those of class 15.
4. When two forms of enumerative concords occur, the first one is the "strong" one, and the second is the "weak."

In the following discussion, weakening a prefix means removing the m nasal from the class 1, 3, and 6 prefixes, leaving only the vowel. The class 9 prefix is weakened to e-. In the examples, the noun is in bold, the concord is bold and underlined, and the word or clause which concords with the noun is underlined (nom. ... conc. + base).