here - 5th International Conference on Bantu Languages

Bantu grammatical description from an insider’s point of view
IM Kosch
Department of African Languages, University of South Africa
koschim@unisa.ac.za
This paper aims to take a critical look at the grammatical descriptions of Bantu languages
from the time when these languages were first committed to writing, with particular
reference to Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa). The 19 th century saw the emergence of
a tradition of grammatical descriptions of the Bantu languages, mainly inaugurated by
missionaries. Their groundbreaking work laid the foundation for future grammatical
descriptions, but the question that needs to be answered is whether and to what extent
their approaches have actually curtailed or promoted the grammatical description of these
languages. T<strong>here</strong> are many indications that they tried to fit these languages into the
descriptive mould of the European languages. The distinction of the grammatical
category ‘case’ can be cited <strong>here</strong> as a short-lived attempt at making sense of the different
usages of nouns in the nominative, genitive, dative or accusative case. It was soon
realised that the distinction of cases was insignificant for the Bantu languages, as nouns
are not marked inflectionally in a similar way as, for example, in German. This
conceptual grid was evidently alien to the grammatical analysis of the Bantu languages.
The Eurocentric understanding of certain categories and phenomena distorted or obscured
the linguistic facts of the languages. Van Wyk (1968:105) calls them “sins of projection”,
but he affirms that they are a universal problem in linguistic methodology and not a
weakness exclusive to the study of Bantu grammar.
Over time, the Bantu languages increasingly became objects of scientific analysis and it
became clear that grammatical descriptions had to be done from an insider’s point of
view to disperse some wrong perceptions. The paper intends to highlight some recent
research findings that have led to a refinement of our understanding of certain
phenomena. A case in point is the concept of pronominalisation. Pronouns are
traditionally said to substitute nouns (or word groups). In the Bantu languages, however,
pronominalisation is the result of the deletion of a noun (or word group) to which the
pronoun refers. (Louwrens, 1981, 1985). Another example concerns the so-called
‘imperfect tense morpheme’, which has erroneously been linked to ‘tense’. A study by
Kosch (1988), however, demonstrates that it is actually a marker of discourse
information, rather than a tense-marker.
Kosch, IM. 1988. ‘Imperfect tense -a’ of Northern Sotho revisited. South African Journal
of African Languages 8(1):1–6.
Louwrens, LJ. 1981. ‘n Perspektief op Wilkes se delesiehipotese oor pronominalisasie in
Bantoe. Studies in Bantoetale 8(1):36–57.
Louwrens, LJ. 1985. Contrastiveness and the so-called absolute pronoun in Northern
Sotho. South African Journal of African Languages 5(2):58–61.
Van Wyk, EB. 1968. Die invloed van die Europease tale en die Europese linguistiese
tradisie op die studie van die Bantoetale. In: Cronjé, G. (ed.), Kultuurbeïnvloeding
tussen Blankes en Bantoe in Suid-Afrika. Pretoria: JL van Schaik Ltd.
PS