Zoeloepredikaat en enkele verskynsels wat daarmee saamhang
Van Rooyen, Christiaan Stephanus
This study was prompted because the
Zulu predicate, and the Bantu predicate in general,
is a veritable storehouse of linguistic phenomena.
A study of the Zulu predicate is, in fact, a
study of the simple sentence. Not everything
concerning the predicate could be treated; and
certain phenomena inevitably had to be left out.
Of these were treatments of moods and tenses,
mainly because they have been previously discussed
by linguists. In order to come to the handling of the
subject the lexicon was divided into the two categories
of verbals and nominals. In the first
chapter this division is clarified, and nominals
are further subdivided into independent and dependent
nominals. It is further indicated that dependent
nominals are mainly declined when it concerns
their shape. An important factor in the study of
the Zulu predicate is the cataphoric effect it
has on the sentence when it appears in the short
form. This results in a kind of binding power
between the short predicate and whatever nominal
follows after it. This binding power is termed
clisis. In the second chapter an attempt is
made to determine the syntactic structure of
the predicate. It was found that a number of
syntactic patterns (word-order) could constitute
a single syntactic structure. It was also
found that the second concord within the predicate
influenced the structure considerably. By
applying various tests, the most important of
which being the test of transitivity, it is
shown that the so-called object noun is not always
an object, and the so-called object concord often
reflects other relations to the predicate than
that of an object. The predicate structure naturally led
to a study of emphasis and focus. A clear distinction
is made between the two: emphasis
occurring through the overt presence of certain
lexical elements and morphological formatives,
whereas focus is achieved mainly by means of the
ordering of the words in the sentence. Instances
are also found where emphasis and focus occur
together on the same part of the sentence. These
phenomena are discussed in the third chapter. The ability of the Zulu predicate to
house a variety of pre-verbal linguistic formatives
prompted an enquiry into the semantic nature of
these formatives. In chapter four each of these
is examined with the aim of determining as precisely as possible its semantic function
within the predicate. The influence of these
formatives is seldom confined to the predicate
alone, but usually extends to the sentence as
a whole. Apart from the general range of preverbal
formatives, six are defined as aspectual
formatives and an attempt is made to describe
the aspect represented by each. To complete the
picture a seventh aspectual formative, but this
time a suffix, is also discussed. The verbal
formatives are discussed in relation to the
verbal predicate as well as the nominal predicate.
A paragraph is also devoted to the embedded
predicate normally known as the participial. In the fifth chapter the question of
transitivity and intransitivity is scrutinized
from the point of view of the relationship which
holds between the nouns in a sentence and the
predicate. Some of the conclusions arrived at
in the second chapter are confirmed in this one. In chapter six the relations between
nouns and the predicate are discussed in more
detail than in the previous chapter. The object
here was to show how certain semantic relationships
between nominals and their predicate are determined, and how they are expressed in the surface
structure. The interdependence of semantic
and syntactic phenomena becomes evident. All the findings ~nd conclusions arrived
at are summarized in the last chapter.
Abstract in English
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