The sequence of derivational and inflectional morphemes in selected Sesotho word categories

[摘要] English: This study examines the sequence of Sesotho derivational and inflectionalmorphemes in open class word categories (verbs and deverbative nouns). It examineshow these morphemes are ordered and based on Greenberg's universal clause, whichstates that 'if both the derivation and inflection follow the root, or they both precede theroot, the derivation is always between the root and the inflection' (Greenberg 1963:93).This statement has been tested in Sesotho word categories such as verb phrases anddeverbative noun phrases. A brief description, classification, linear and hierarchicalarrangement of Sesotho grammatical morphemes have been given in terms of the XBartheory and Beard (1995)'s, Lexeme-Based �?Morphology as a background theoryto contextualise the analysis of the sequence of Sesotho lexical morphemes. Sampleword categories were chosen from Sesotho noun class list, and a range of Sesothoword categories were selected from the list and analysed to determine the sequenceand various combinations of derivational and inflectional morphemes.It has been observed that inflectional morphemes in verbs are always amid the rootand the closing vowel known as the verbal end. Secondly, it has been observed thatwhen inflectional morphemes appear with derivational morphemes in the formation ofa new word category, the derivational morphemes, in this case noun prefixes, alwaysappear at the beginning of the word as in (Mosebeletsi [Worker]), and also appear atthe end of the word as in this example (Tshwarelo [Forgiveness]). This study arguedthat Sesotho as one of the agglutinative languages, employs noun class prefixes asnominal derivational morphemes, which appear at the beginning of the noun and italso employs locative suffixes [-eng] to form locative nouns which function as adverbs.The suffix [-eng] therefore also functions as derivational morpheme but in this case itappears at the end of the noun locatives. This study therefore concludes that Sesothodoes not conform to Greenberg's (1963) universal statement.

[发布机构] University of the Free State