Relationship between situative and relative in Northern Sotho

Abstract

There are different viewpoints regarding the modal autonomy of situative and relative verbs. They are either regarded as one and the same mood or as two autonomous moods. In this presentation they are regarded as two autonomous moods owing to the following facts: Only situative verbs, and not verbal relatives, can express simultaneous actions. Only relative verbs may be preceded by qualificative particles. Semantically only situative verbs which function as qualifiers agree with verbal relatives. Situative verbs may have various other semantic connotations such as that of condition, contrast, actualizing, etc., besides that of qualificative which agrees with the semantic connotation of the relative. Notwithstanding these differences which led to the conclusion that the situative and relative are two different verb categories, it is not denied that these two verbal forms do sometimes overlap each other morphologically, semantically, and syntactically.