The value of typology in solving certain Zulu linguistic issues

Abstract

A typological study of a language family can throw light on specific linguistic issues in a language belonging to such a family. In Zulu there is for instance uncertainty regarding the use of the object agreement marker in conjunction with its co-referential noun in the basic sentence position. A typological investigation of object agreement in other Bantu languages shows that this uncertainty might be ascribed to the fact that Zulu seems to be going through a transitional phase concerning object-verb agreement. Another problem concerns the invariable form of the reflexive prefix in Zulu. A typological study indicates that ‘reflexiveness’ surfaces in different ways in the Bantu language family. Therefore the origins of the invariable reflexive prefix in Zulu can possibly be explained against the background of a continuum representing the various surface realizations of the reflexive in other Bantu languages.