Multiple object agreement morphemes in Setswana: A computational approach

Abstract

Setswana is an agglutinative language where prefixes and suffixes are extensively used in the formation of words. Words such as verbs, pronouns, adjectives and so on, which have a grammatical relationship with nouns in sentences, demonstrate agreement with such nouns by means of agreement morphemes. In certain instances verbs in Setswana sentences may take two objects. Both of these objects may be represented in the verb by object agreement morphemes. The result is that two object agreement morphemes may be prefixed to the verb. While the morphemes of the verb are presented systematically in Setswana grammars, the occurrence of multiple object agreement morphemes has received limited attention in the literature on Setswana linguistics. Similarly, this phenomenon has not yet been investigated from a computational morphological point of view.