1. Family: Niger-Congo
  2. Subfamily: Benue-Congo
  3. Genus: Bantoid

Sesotho

WALS coordinates: 28° S, 27° E

spoken in Lesotho, South Africa

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Sotho (Southern)
Routledge:
  • Sotho (South)
Other:
  • S Sotho,
  • Southern Sotho
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Morphology
Reduplication Productive full and partial reduplication
Nominal Categories
The Associative Plural Associative same as additive plural
Ordinal Numerals First, two-th, three-th
Numeral Classifiers Absent
Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers Formally similar, with interrogative
Nominal Syntax
Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses Highly differentiated
Adjectives without Nouns Without marking
Verbal Categories
Perfective/Imperfective Aspect Grammatical marking
The Past Tense Present, 2-3 remoteness distinctions
The Future Tense No inflectional future
The Perfect Other perfect
Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect None
Verbal Number and Suppletion None
Word Order
Order of Subject, Object and Verb SVO
Order of Subject and Verb SV
Order of Object and Verb VO
Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb VOX
Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Prepositions
Order of Genitive and Noun Noun-Genitive
Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
Position of Polar Question Particles No question particle
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase VO and Prepositions
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun VO and NRel
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun VO and NAdj
Simple Clauses
Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject pronouns in different position
Negative Morphemes Negative particle
Polar Questions Interrogative intonation only
Lexicon
Tea Words derived from Min Nan Chinese te