Adverbial descriptions in Northern Sotho

Abstract

Owing to a virtual lack of a ‘basic adverbs’ word class in Northern Sotho, the objective of this article is to investigate some language strategies which are exploited to express adverbial meanings in this language. In popular Northern Sotho grammar books, it is clearly stated that adverbs in Northern Sotho are usually derived from other parts of speech. Important language strategies, such as the use of auxiliary word groups and ideophones in expressing adverbial meanings are, to a great extent, neglected in most popular Northern Sotho grammars. Owing to the fact that in most cases, no one-to-one lexical equivalence exists between Northern Sotho and for instance English adverbs, the compilers of Northern Sotho-English dictionaries find it difficult to accommodate the different strategies in these dictionaries. In this article, various ways of conveying adverbial expressions in Northern Sotho are illustrated, with the focus mainly on auxiliary word groups and ideophones. The aim of this article is not to do a grammatical analysis of the adverb and ideophone word classes as such, but rather to focus on the descriptive function of these words in certain Northern Sotho contexts.