Doke revisited – Combining Zulu ‘vowel verbs with variant non-vowel forms’ and ‘latent-vowel verbs’ in a single category

Abstract

Doke’s influence on Zulu description cannot be overstated. It underlies, to this day, most grammatical works on the language. Our attempt here is to do away with a subtle distinction Doke introduced by merging the two sub-categories of what he identified as ‘vowel verbs with variant non-vowel forms’ (which include /e, o, a/ as possible initial vowels), and ‘latent-vowel verbs’ in which the initial vowel is /i/. The distinction, based on arguably specific behaviour of the latter, stems, in our view, from a surface reading of the facts and tends to fall away if the morphophonology of the language is considered fully, as it can be ascribed to general morphophonological rules operating in the language. Thus, we propose a category of ‘vowel verbs with variant non-vowel forms’ inclusive of both, which would comprise all vowels that may appear in verb-initial position in Zulu, that is, all five phonemic vowels of the language save /u/.