Sesotho grammar

Note: All examples marked with ‡ are included in the audio samples. If a table caption is marked then all Sesotho examples in that table are included in the audio samples. The orthography used in this and related articles is that of South Africa, not Lesotho. For a discussion of the differences between the two see the notes on Sotho orthography.

This article presents a brief overview of the grammar of the Sotho language and provides links to more detailed articles.

The Sotho language may be described in several ways depending on the aspect being considered.

Bantu languages are agglutinative — words are constructed by combining discrete formatives (a.k.a. "morphemes") according to specific rules, and sentences are constructed by stringing together words according to somewhat less strict rules. Formatives alone cannot constitute words; formatives are the component parts of words.

These formatives may be classed generally into roots, stems, prefixes, concords, suffixes, verbal auxiliaries, enclitics, and proclitics.

Roots are the most basic irreducible elements of words and are immutable (except under purely phonetic changes). Entire words are built from roots by affixing other formatives around the root as appendages; every word (except contractions and compounds) contains exactly one root, from which it derives its most basic meaning (though, technically speaking, the root by itself does not really have any meaning). Roots are the basis of the Sotho parts of speech.

The following words:

are all formed from the root [ʀutʼ] -rut-.

Although in some cases various phonetic processes may ultimately change the root's form in predictable ways (such as the nasalization in the last two examples above) the root itself is considered to be unchanged.

There can be no doubt that words never emerged simply as roots. The root is a dead thing — the study of roots is primarily to aid the compilation of dictionaries, to further the study of comparative Bantu linguistics, and to help trace the evolution and connections of different languages. Many roots are shared by a wide range of Bantu languages.

Some further examples of roots:

Note that although it is often true that the common root of a number of words may be defined as having some inherent meaning, very often the connection between words sharing common roots is tentative, and this is further evidence that prefix-less noun roots and stems are ultimately meaningless. Roots from a common source help to connect nouns with certain meanings, and often the class prefixes are merely incidental.

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