Sesotho direct relative qualifiers: Why simple things become complex

Abstract

Sesotho has different types of sentences, including simple, compound and complex sentences. Most scholars who have an interest in the complex sentences claim that such sentences entail both main and subordinate clauses, and that the latter is embodied by complementisers. However, few researchers have addressed direct relative qualifier complexity in a sentence. As simple as the direct relative qualifier whose stem is a verb ending in /-ng/ may seem, its usage in a sentence becomes complex. Therefore, the article seeks to explore features of the direct relative qualifiers, which lead to complexity in a sentence within the minimalist program. The article argues that Sesotho does not rely only on the complementisers, relativisers and wh-words to make a sentence a complex sentence. The direct relatives whose stems are verbs mark such a constituent as a subordinate clause. A sentence that has a direct relative qualifier can have one or two subjects performing more than one action. A subject moves from the [spec-VP] to [spec-TP] to become the subject of the entire sentence. The article concludes that the direct relatives whose stems are the verbs do not qualify to be the qualifiers, but they are clauses that describe the substantives in a sentence.