Locatives in isiZulu: A grammatico-linguistic analysis of usage trends

Abstract

The formation of nominal locatives occurs through the use of different locative affixes, which include the prefixing of e-, o-, ku-, kwi- and kwa- as well as the suffixing of -ini, as grammatically captured through rule formulation in isiZulu grammars. This article presents a grammatico-linguistic analysis of the usage of isiZulu locatives, which proves to be an interrelation of morphology, phonology, syntax and semantics. It furthermore covers the realisation of different ways in which locative affixes are used in everyday communication, which differs to an extent from documented grammatical rules. The study used a qualitative method and adopted a descriptive research design. Data was acquired using three data collection instruments: prompt exercises distributed among 40 isiZulu young males and females from Newcastle and Thembisa. These tools included a transcription of an isiZulu radio station broadcast and document analysis with extracts from an isiZulu newspaper. This collection resulted in the identification of linguistic themes referred to as locativisation trends, termed ku- dominance, kwi- prominence and prefix substitution with prefix and suffix for +human nouns.