MZUZU UNIVERSITY

CENTRE FOR OPEN, DISTANCE & e- LEARNING

FACULTY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE STUDIES

TO : MRS D. MTAWALI

FROM : STARFORD MALIKO

REGISTRATION NO. : BEDLDL 43819

COURSE TITLE : DESCRIPTION OF CHICHEWA

COURSE CODE : ALLE 3502

SEMESTER No. : 7

LEVEL : 4

TASK : SUMMERIZING SECTION 1.2.2 OF

MSAKA’S 2019 BOOK INTO 1-2
PAGES.

DUE DATE : 29TH MARCH, 2024.

 THE BANTU NOUN CLASS PROBLEM

The text discusses Bantu languages which exhibits one of the most complex noun class system.
The noun class system ranges from 1 to 23 and a pervasive agreement system that affects words
associated with the noun within and outside the noun phrase. It is believed that Bleek (1862,
1869) and Meinhof (1899, 1906; 1932) are the ones who discovered the Bantu noun class
system. These classes are primarily determined by morphological markers known as noun class
prefixes. These prefixes were largely obtained through linguistic reconstruction as they are
assumed to have existed in parent Bantu language –ProtoBantu.

However, there are two serious challenges that arise from the characterisation of the Bantu
noun class system. Firstly, the lack of consistent criteria for each noun class and secondly,
discrepancies between the assumed semantics and the actual nouns classified in those classes.
The inconsistencies with the Bleek-Meinhof schema is assumed to have arised due to language
change. On the contrary, all Chichewa speakers seem to converge on the same noun class
system. Studies on the acquisition of noun classes in other Bantu languages show that these
systems are typically in place by around the age of 3. If it can be concluded that the system has
undergone changes, then the question could be; what patterns of that changed system are that
enable a child acquirer’s parser to work out the system? According to what is currently known
about language acquisition, a highly irregular distribution of linguistic evidence cannot be the
basis of successful language acquisition.

What appears to be the case with the Bleek-Meinhof system is that diachronically informed
linguists, but not child acquirers, have access to the evidence that is assumed to hold the key to
the grammatical structure of the Chichewa noun class system. It has been concluded that all
children acquire the structure of their native language in not more than five years of age, with
little apparent effort or confusion. It should be noted that language scientists fare considerably
worse in identifying that structure. Therefore, it has been concluded that it is clear that genuine
insight into how the child successfully converges on the grammar of their native-language can
only be obtained if linguists seek to operate with the data that acquirers can reasonably be
assumed to have at their disposal.

Furthermore, in all typical noun class systems, there are two types of information that cue the
noun class system of a particular language. These are noun-external distributional information
and noun-internal distributional information. During the process of language acquisition, these
two types of information are automatically available to the child. The Bleek-Meinhof system
is predominantly based on noun-internal information as there are some distinct noun classes
sharing the same agreement markers. In addition, these two types of information have also been
postulated to be the basis of many noun class systems and have led to different characterisations
of noun classes. Saka (2019) and other linguists suggest for a different approach that focuses
on noun-external distributional information and proposes a new account of the Chichewa noun
class system.

In conclusion, two positions are taken in the present work by Saka (2019) which are; taking a
child language acquisition perspective and organising the noun classes primarily on the basis
of agreement information before considering the distribution of noun-internal characteristics.
It has been noted that the problems with the Bantu noun class framework relate to the schema
itself and not necessarily to either the language data or to its historical trajectory, as is typically
claimed in the existing books. The schema is observed to only account for a fraction of
Chichewa nouns, which shows that it is not based on a properly sampled dataset. Therefore,
Saka (2019) wishes to present a carefully sampled dataset and provide a synchronically
reasonable explanation for the Chichewa agreement -based classification system.