A diachronic approach to the explanation of problematic/unusual past tense forms in Lobedu and Northern Sotho

Abstract

Lobedu is one of the dialects belonging to the North-eastern dialect cluster of Northern Sotho. It features numerous intriguing differences with Northern Sotho, ranging from phonological, morphological and syntactical to vocabulary. A prominent feature of past tense forms in Lobedu are forms either consisting of or ending on ḓê. Dental sounds in Lobedu are cognates of palatalised proto phonemes but seeing that the past tense suffix -il-ê does not contain a palatalised proto phoneme, the origin of the ḓê forms had to be established. The investigation rendered satisfactory answers, not only as regards the origin of ḓê forms, but also concerning other past tense allomorphs and features of such allomorphs in Northern Sotho with which scholars and authors of textbooks have wrestled over a long period of time. It has been established that the causative -y- plays a crucial role in the formation of certain past tense allomorphs. It has furthermore been found that the causative -y- and another y which is derived when the vowel i in the past tense suffix glides, can respectively be linked to the final vowels -ê or -e which occur in past tense allomorphs featuring tS in Northern Sotho.