Wordhood in Zulu1

Abstract

In Zulu, certain orthographic words seem to incorporate more than one syntactic category. Applying various syntactic tests to these forms shows that some of the morpheme sequences contained in them function syntactically as words, that is, the orthographic word and the syntactic word do not coincide. Forms shown to be syntactic words are the question morphemes -ni and -phi, the relative marker, certain of the ‘adverbial formatives', nganga- ‘as big as', and the past and remote past markers be- and (C)-a:-. If these findings are correct, then Khumalo's (1987) phonological rules must be seen to apply across word-boundaries, and not just word-internally. Also, syntactic rules must operate on features of the word, and not on morphemes as such. On the other hand, the demonstrative, which is sometimes argued to be a syntactic word, shows characteristics of an incorporated and subordinate form when it co-occurs with the noun. This finding would indicate that demonstratives are not always phrasal heads.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2006, 24(3): 311–329