Sesotho verbs are words in the language that signify the action or state of a substantive, and are brought into agreement with it using the subjectival concord.
Monosyllabic stems may be classified into several categories: Vowel verb stems are conjugated as regular verbs but are put into a separate class due to being uncommon in Bantu languages (and, in some languages but not in Sesotho, causing changes to concords and other formatives prefixed to them).
The difference lies in whether the "underlying tone" of the verb's first syllable is high or null (under-specified).
Consider the following example: The alternatives are more complex in their respective languages: Passive verbs are rare in the Niger–Congo family outside the Bantu sub-branch.
The past tense of verbs ending with this suffix is formed in the general way by replacing the final vowel with -ile.
In this case it simply converts the verb from transitive to conjunctive import, with a minor modification of meaning (the action is slightly extended in time, or indicates a habit of the actor) The perfect is usually formed by changing the final vowel to -e, though if the original verb was monosyllabic then the perfect replaces the -na with -nne
It is formed by suffixing -olla (Proto-Bantu *-udud-) although several other dead formations exist, showing two sets of derivations into intransitive, transitive, and causative.
These extensions, or at least their short forms as found in other languages (Proto-Bantu intransitive *-uk- and transitive *-ud-), are sometimes called the "separative" instead.
It is indicated by reduplication,[11] the form being determined by the length of the verb: Note that this derivation pattern, like all other uses of reduplication in Bantu languages, is also sometimes used to indicate an intensification and/or repetition of an action—in these cases the actual meaning must be determined from context.
Originally, this suffix was not used to derive new meanings as such, but rather to emphasise the stative positional nature of the verb.
Originally, this suffix was not used to derive new meanings as such, but rather to emphasise or intensify the contactive nature of the verb.
Apart from the obvious constraints of semantics (whether a complex meaning actually makes any sense and serves any possible purpose) and markedness (how strange and complex the verb sounds to the native speaker), there are also restrictions on the order of the extensions.
The most basic rule (which is broken by very few languages) is that the passive and the short causative[15] always follow all the other extensions (including the perfect -il-, which is always used with the final vowel -e).
Although it is probable that Proto-Bantu had fairly strict restrictions on the order of the other extensions, these rules have been relaxed somewhat in modern Bantu languages.
Note that, since prefixes are of the shape CV or V (where C represents a consonant and V a vowel), verb roots end without the final vowel, prefixes are of the shape (VC)* (* indicates possible repetition) and the final vowel simply has shape V, this and other structures reinforce the open syllable structure of the Bantu languages, and very few languages have broken it.
In addition to the verbal derivatives, the following changes may occur to the stem's suffix -a, during conjugation: The general rules for the formation of the perfect are varied due to various mostly phonological interactions with the suffix:[16] For all verbs, however, the past tense may also be indicated with the simple -ile (past subjunctive) multi-verbal conjugation, although its meaning does diverge somewhat from that of the perfect (especially with stative verbs) Verbal conjugation is by far the most complex and varied topic in the Bantu languages.
The tenses are conjugated by means of prefixes and infixes[14] indicating person, mood, implication, and aspect.
The language recognises four moods: the indicative, the subjunctive, the potential, and the participial sub-mood (infinitives are nouns and imperatives are interjectives).
The moods may be divided into tenses according to time (remote past, immediate past, present, immediate future, and remote future) and implication (simple, progressive, and exclusive), which may be further subdivided according to aspect into indefinite, continuous, and perfect.
There are also many often complex compound tenses, indicated by changes in tone and the use of deficient verbs (multi-verbal conjugations).
In the Bantu languages, the typical full structure of verbs, excluding contractions, is as follows (the * indicates possible iteration):
root │ │ │ │ │ objectival concord │ │ │ │ aspect marker │ │ │ tense marker │ │ negative │ subjectival concord pre-initial morpheme In Sesotho, as with most other Bantu languages, this has been modified somewhat, resulting in the following structure ("I shall no longer look on his behalf"): Ha ke sa tla mo sheb el a
The extensions include suffixes used in verbal derivatives as well as the perfect -il- (which is always followed by the final vowel -e).
With the exception of the verb root, each of these formatives is monosyllabic, but in Sesotho some verbal infixes (those that are contractions) and extensions (those that are obvious compoundings of earlier forms) also have more than one syllable.
Many aspects and tenses are indicated by multi-verbal conjugations and, with the exception of the subjectival concord, the root, and the final vowel, most of these formatives are not always necessary.
Note that infinitives and imperatives (both of which do not have subjectival concords) may be considered separate parts of speech (nouns/gerunds and interjectives).
They form part of multi-verbal conjugations consisting of a string of verbs, each with its own subjectival concord.
The issue of how many moods individual Bantu languages have exactly is not entirely settled due to their complex morphologies.
According to Doke's analysis, the situative is just the participial sub-mood, the qualificative is a form of the participial, the consecutive is the past subjunctive (used when telling stories, it sounds as if the story-teller is using the present tense to describe a past action, but the subjectival concords differ from those of the indicative present), the habitual is a multi-verbal tense using a specific set of deficient verbs (Group III in Doke's classification) followed by a perfect subjunctive (and its negative uses another deficient verb in the same group); while the infinitive and most imperatives are not verbal moods (they are separate parts of speech and cannot be used as the predicate of a sentence, though imperatives can form interjectival sentences and there is a form of the subjunctive that could alternatively be interpreted as an imperative using subjectival concords).
The one point most Bantuists seem to agree upon is that, apart from the indicative mood, Bantu languages also have a subjunctive formed (usually) by changing the final vowel of the verb to *-e (which corresponds to Sesotho /ɛ/).