Comments on the so-called indefinite copulative relatives in Zulu

Abstract

In this paper the so-called indefinite copulative relatives in Zulu are investigated. They are relatives formed from copulative nouns by the prefixing of what is generally believed to be the indefinite relative concord of class 17, i.e. oku-, as for instance in okuyingane, okuyimoto, etc. The meaning Zulu scholars normally assign to these words is mostly in accordance with their assumed grammatical structure, thus okuyingane is taken to mean ‘that which is a child’, okuyimoto ‘that which is a car’, etc. This investigation has shown that none of these assumptions is true, i.e. that these structures do not express the meaning scholars usually assign to them and that the concord oku- is not a concord of the locative class, i.e. of class 17, but a relic of what seems to be a noun class with strong emotive import no longer existent in Zulu.