Proclitic bo of Northern Sotho

Abstract

In most publications on the Sotho languages the morpheme bo- which is used with nouns of Class 1a is regarded as a noun prefix constituting a subclass of Class 2 (or an independent class). The underlying assumptions are that it is a true noun class prefix and that there is, in principle, a one-to-one correspondence between Class 1a and Class 2a. In this article bo- is analyzed semantically, phonologically, and grammatically and its use discussed in detail. It is shown that it lacks most of the characteristics of true class prefixes, but that it can be used as a pluralizer and a nominalizer with an almost unlimited range of nouns, other parts of speech, phrases, and sentences. It is concluded that bo- is a specialized proclitic variant of the absolute pronoun of Class 2, bona, which has undergone partial rank-shifting towards a class prefix.