Sesotho concords
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Just as the Sesotho sentence centres on the Sesotho noun, the noun is made to "concòrd" ("agree") with the verbs, pronouns, and qualificatives describing it by a set of Sesotho noun concords.
The noun concord system is the most striking feature of the Bantu language family. The exact number of concord types differs from language to language, and traces of this system (and the noun class system) are even found in some Niger–Congo languages outside the narrow Bantu family.
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:
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).
The pronominal concords are used in the formation of the absolute pronouns.
In form they very roughly appear to be the weakened prefix followed by the open-mid back vowel o. They all have a low tone.
Doke & Mofokeng, using evidence from Setswana, claims that in fact the pronominal concords are derived from the absolute pronouns.
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