Subclasses of Zulu nouns

Abstract

The evolution of isiZulu requires the coinage of new words or the borrowing of foreign words to express new concepts and ideas. Two noun classes have become prominent tools in the borrowing process. A number of nouns arc borrowed by means of what was traditionally known as Subclass la, but non-personal nouns arc inflected according to the syntactic pattern of Class 3 rather than that of Class 1. Such nouns should therefore be classified as Subclass 3a. A considerable number of nouns are also borrowed by simply prefixing them with the nasal-less noun prefix /i-/ and make their plural in /ama-/. The syntactic behaviour of their singular forms, however, follows in the main the pattern of Class 9 nouns. It is therefore necessary to classify them as Subclass 9a.