Sotho deficient verbs

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In the Sotho language, the deficient verbs are a special subset of Sesotho verbs that require a subordinate or complementary verb to complete their action, and which are used to form many tenses and to impart certain shades of meaning to the predicate. These verbs form part of multi-verbal conjugations comprising a string of verbs (each with its own subjectival concord) and verbal auxiliaries.

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Deficient verbs, being "deficient", are never used alone. Many of them are irregular in form and have irregular inflexions. Many of these verbs seem radical in nature, while others (especially those with complex implications) are obviously derived from certain extant normal verbs (but are used with slightly different meanings). What distinguishes the deficient usage of these normal verbs is the fact that they are followed by another verb and affect its meaning (and only the main verb may carry an objectival concord).

Multi-verbal syntax

Deficient verbs are used to alter the meaning of complementary normal verbs, which have to follow the deficient verb(s) in word order. The following diagram represents the general shape of a typical multi-verbal conjugation ("In vain I edit them all"):

       multi-verbal phrase
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│            verbal complex       │
│           ┌────────────┐      │
│           │       stem │      │
│           │     ┌──────┐      │
Ke•tswatswa ke•di•hlophisa tsohle
   └──────┘ │  │  └───┘  │ └────┘
   def. vb. │  │  root   │  obj.│
            │  └─────────┘      │
            │  macro-stem       │
            └───────────────────┘
                 verb phrase

The full(er) picture

(The bullets • are used here to join the parts of single words which would have been written separately in the current disjunctive orthography)

Apart from the verbal complex, researchers of Bantu languages have noted that when the main verb is followed by its (first) direct object then this structure creates a "verb phrase" (or "prosodic phrase"), which may be treated as one phonological unit or domain by some grammatical processes. [1] For example, many languages with unbounded tonal shift or spread laws (unlike Sesotho's bounded spread — see Sesotho tonology) may often shift or spread a high tone underlying in the verbal complex all the way to the final, penult, or antepenultimate syllable of the following word, but only if that word is the verb's object. One Sesotho tonal law that's mildly sensitive to the verb phrase is the finality restriction (FR), which is not applied if the verb is immediately followed by the object.

The structure created by deficient verbs followed by a normal verb is unique in a few ways:

  1. Deficient verbs must have a complementary (main) verb, and this main verb must follow the deficient verbs, with no intervening words and no variation in word order. This is one of the very few instances in the Sesotho language when word order is absolutely immutable. If one wishes to emphasise the main verb's object then it needs to be placed before the very first deficient verb in the sequence, not just before the main verb.
  2. There may be no pauses in speech between the deficient verbs and the main verb, contrary to how other words are treated. The entire sequence is pronounced as one whole unit, and may not be broken up. [2]

Classification

Even though many other Bantu languages have some deficient verbs, the system used in the Sotho–Tswana languages is unusually intricate and specialized, with a rather large number of verbs that may be used deficiently. Although the deficient verbs themselves may usually be used in various moods and tenses, the main verb is limited to only a limited number of moods and tenses, and it is the job of the deficient verb to reflect any changes in these parameters (if it supports them). If multiple deficient verbs are used then each verb affects the mood of the following.

By examining the mood and tense of the main verb, deficient verbs may be classified into six groups according to the type of complement they govern. It is clear that most groups are followed by participial or subjunctive moods, which are precisely the moods often used when forming sequences of verbs or subordinate clauses using non-deficient verbs.

Deficient verb classification
GroupType of complement
I Full participial
II Past subjunctive
III Perfect subjunctive
IV Full sequence
V Present and/or perfect participial
VI Infinitive

Within the groups, the verbs tend to have similar forms, but often vastly differing conjugation possibilities and behaviours. Some of the verbs are only used in a handful of tenses and moods; some verbs indicate negation by negating the deficient verb itself, some by negating the main verb, and some may do either (or even both at the same time).

Within Groups IV to VI, there is no set number of members and different speakers and communities may differ in the verbs they regularly use. Basically, a verb may become deficient if it used in certain consecutive constructions with a slightly modified meaning that disappears when the verb is used alone. Since the modified meaning does not make any sense when the verb is used alone, the deficient use is marked by having the complement follow the verb directly and with no pause (thus creating a multi-verbal phrase).

[bɑ'ilebɑxut͡ɬʼɑ]ba ile ba kgutla; either 'they went and they returned' when there is a slight pause between the two verbs and the final vowel of -ile ('went') is low toned (due to the Finality Restriction; see Sesotho tonology); or 'they came back' when there is no pause between the two verbs and the final vowel of -ile (a Group II deficient verb indicating definite past tense) is high toned.

In the example sentences under the following sections, the entire verb sequence is bold while the complement verb to the deficient verbs is bold and underlined.

Notes

  1. ↑ Actually, to be a bit more accurate, the verb must not be focused, otherwise the focused verb and the following object constitute two prosodic phrases. A phonological clue which shows this to be true is the fact that when a verb is focused it has overt penult stress, which is usually not present when a word is not phrase final (bold syllables are stressed):
    [ʀɪfʊtʰʊlɑdihʊlɑ]re fothola dihola ('we uproot weeds' [verb not focused])
    [ʀɪ'ɑdifʊtʰʊlɑdihʊlɑ]re a di fothola dihola ('we do uproot the weeds indeed' [verb focused])
    In the example above, the object and the verb were emphasised by using the objectival concord -di- in addition to the direct object, but one effect of this is that the verb becomes focused and (if it is in the present indicative tense) needs to be marked with the infix -a-, thus creating two separate prosodic phrases. The same thing happens when the object appears before the verb in word order, and indeed it is precisely when the verb is marked for the object and focused that the language may assume any word order to emphasise certain parts of the sentence (not just SVO). In the main example [kʼɪt͡sʼʷɑt͡sʼʷɑkʼiˌdiɬopʰisɑt͡sʼoɬɛ]ke tswatswa ke di hlophisa tsohle the main verb is not focused since, although it does have an objectival concord, it does not agree with its direct object (Sesotho is a pro-drop language; in the example both the verb and its direct object agree with the unspecified object rendered with the accusative pronoun "them" in the English translation).
  2. ↑ Some researchers treat the entire unit as one very long word with multiple morphemes and subjectival concords, especially since an inflected deficient verb can never stand alone. This would however violate some of the most basic properties of the Bantu verbal complex, such as the fact that an inflected verb must have one and only one subjectival concord. It is clear that deficient stems are like normal verb stems in that by assuming certain affixes in a certain order they create complete words, even if those words may not stand independently. Synchronically and diachronically, there are numerous instances of sequences of verbs contracting to form structures where some of the verbs are no longer independent words, but this is, without exception, always accompanied by one or more of the verbs losing their subjectival concords.
  3. ↑ This naturally causes a lot of disagreement as to the true nature of this verbal form, and many researchers put it under its own "Habitual mood" or treat is as a "habitual indicative tense." Here's an example of its use without Group III deficient verbs:
    [ʊneɑ'ɑtʼisɑhʊt͡ɬʼɑɑʀɪbʊlel̩lɪditʼɑbɑ]o ne a atisa ho tla, a re bolelle ditaba ('he frequently came and told us the news')
    This uses the Group I -ne to form the continuous past tense of the Group IV -atisa ('do often'), followed by a short pause and a perfect subjunctive. A more common way to say this would be to use a normal present-future subjunctive (note that it is written exactly the same as the above example, but differs in the pronunciation of one vowel and the tonal pattern of the second verb, and lacks a pause):
    [ʊneɑ'ɑtʼisɑhʊt͡ɬʼɑɑʀɪbʊlel̩lɛditʼɑbɑ]o ne a atisa ho tla a re bolelle ditaba
  4. ↑ These are -ba, -hla, -mpa, -nna, and -ke. These verbs are strange in several ways. Their final vowels change to [e] instead of [ɑ] in the future tenses, and to [e] instead of [ɛ] in the subjunctive. -ke may actually be -ka, but since it occurs in a limited number of tenses, it only ever gets to appear as -ke. They are connected with the similar looking verbs in Group III. Although in Sesotho these verbs have no non-deficient uses, in Setswana go nna is a normal verb meaning "to stay/live at a place" (the same meaning as Sesotho [huˌdulɑ]ho dula, which is also used as a deficient verb in Group V).
  5. ↑ If -rata was being used with its normal meaning then this would literally mean 'he loves dying', but it isn't, and it doesn't.

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