The sequence of derivational and inflectional morphemes in selected Sesotho word categories

This study examines the sequence of Sesotho derivational and inflectional morphemes in open class word categories (verbs and deverbative nouns). It examines how these morphemes are ordered and based on Greenberg’s universal clause, which states that ‘if both the derivation and inflection follow the root, or they both precede the root, the derivation is always between the root and the inflection’ (Greenberg 1963:93). This statement has been tested in Sesotho word categories such as verb phrases and deverbative noun phrases. A brief description, classification, linear and hierarchical arrangement of Sesotho grammatical morphemes have been given in terms of the XBar theory and Beard (1995)’s, Lexeme-Based – Morphology as a background theory to contextualise the analysis of the sequence of Sesotho lexical morphemes. Sample word categories were chosen from Sesotho noun class list, and a range of Sesotho word categories were selected from the list and analysed to determine the sequence and various combinations of derivational and inflectional morphemes. It has been observed that inflectional morphemes in verbs are always amid the root and the closing vowel known as the verbal end. Secondly, it has been observed that when inflectional morphemes appear with derivational morphemes in the formation of a new word category, the derivational morphemes, in this case noun prefixes, always appear at the beginning of the word as in (Mosebeletsi [Worker]), and also appear at the end of the word as in this example (Tshwarelo [Forgiveness]). This study argued that Sesotho as one of the agglutinative languages, employs noun class prefixes as nominal derivational morphemes, which appear at the beginning of the noun and it also employs locative suffixes [-eng] to form locative nouns which function as adverbs. The suffix [-eng] therefore also functions as derivational morpheme but in this case it appears at the end of the noun locatives. This study therefore concludes that Sesotho does not conform to Greenberg’s (1963) universal statement.