CHAPTER 5: MORPHOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SOME AMAXHOSA SURNAMES
5.2 Morphology defined
Proper names are generally names of persons, animals, products, places and personified characters in fictitious contexts. They are also known as proper nouns. There are opposing views with regard to whether or not proper names have any semantic content (Valentine, Brennen & Brédart, 1996; Lyons, 1999; Cruse, 2000). One view is that they do not, since they only denote an individual, nothing more. Another view is that they do have sense and
69 they denote one-member sets. Both views, however, state or imply that proper names
constitute unique references.
The proper name is used in communication to enable identification, that is, it makes unique reference to a particular identifiable entity. When the speaker thus uses a proper name he is making reference to one, and only one individual or entity. The common noun, on the other hand, may refer to any member of a class of entities. The proper name serves the same basic function cross-linguistically. The naming traditions and patterns mainly reflect a people’s culture and, as such, there are bound to be characteristic features peculiar to a particular language. While it may be necessary to try and look systematically at the grammar of proper names mainly as lexical units, it is also important to look beyond the unit, given the role of agreement morphology in the syntax of the language.
Contrary to popular belief, not every personal name in Northern Sotho has a clear meaning.
There is a growing tendency to try and reconstruct every personal name in order to make a synchronic recovery of their semantic content because of the fashionable view that ‘all African names mean something’. Efforts at forcing meaning (formally and informally) out of some traditional proper names are often either or both inaccurate and downright ridiculous, and therefore seem fruitless. Some traditional names that are carried over from generation to generation do not have clear derivational origins, and therefore seem to fit the general view that proper names are expressions with no sense. Another possibility is that their origins may be so archaic that the senses have been lost over generations.
However, in such traditional names there is generally a clear guidance with regard to the masculinity and femininity of the referent. The names have an inherent semantic feature [±male], subject to the naming patterns of a particular clan. Just as it may not be appropriate to name a girl John and a boy Elizabeth, in amaXhosa culture it would be odd to name a girl Masixole or Mzimkhulu and a boy Mandisa or Zintle. Some names have, therefore, inherent information about the gender of its bearer, even though this is not always the case. The name- giving patterns of a specific clan or dialectal group, coupled with cross-marriages, may see these conventions violated to a minimal extent. However, this would not be the norm but rather a generally understood deviation from semantic regularity.
Morphology is the study of the structure of words. It is a branch of linguistics dealing with the forms and formation of words. Bonvillain (1997), Zungu (1999), Aronoff (1979), Nida
70 (1976), Kosch (1997), Matthews (1991) and Haspelmath (2002) all agree that morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and that it also shows how morphemes are
systematically arranged to create the meaning of a word. Zungu (1999: 76) further defines morphology as the internal structure of a word that can be identified as being either a self- standing lexical item, conveying the basic meaning as found in the lexicon, or a cluster of elements comprising, beside the lexical item or stem, one or more affixes, that is, particulars added before (= prefix), or after (= suffix), or within (= infix) the stem to convey additional grammatical meaning(s).
Therefore, morphology is that important part of grammar/linguistics that specializes in the study of the anatomy of word categories found in all languages of the universe. Morphology deals with how different word categories are composed, i.e. how morphemes are arranged during the developmental stage of a word. If the morphemes are poorly arranged, that
particular word will lack recognizable meaning in that specific language. Personal names are nouns, and by virtue of the fact that they are made up of meaningful sequences of sound (morphemes), they carry meaning.
Words are constituted of different morphemes.A morpheme can be defined as a minimal unit having more or less constant meaning and more of less constant form. It is through these morphemes that words become meaningful. Bonvillain (1999), Fromkin and Rodman (1993), Kosch (2006), Rankhododo (1999), Guma (1971), Nida (1976), Haspelmath (2002) and Van der Spuy (1989), define a morpheme as the smallest unit/constituent of a word that cannot be further analyzed or broken down. They agree that morphemes play an important role in assigning meanings to words.
Examples of these different morphemes are as follows (Mandende, 2009)
• The meaningful parts into which words can be divided e.g., boldest can be divided into bold+est--are called the morphemes of the language. These are considered the basic units of meaning in a particular language.
• Words that have meaning by themselves - boy, food, door - are called lexical morphemes.
Those words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another - words like at, in, on, -ed, -s - are called grammatical morphemes.
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• Those morphemes that can stand alone as words are called free morphemes (e.g., boy, food, in, on). The morphemes that occur only in combination are called bound morphemes (e.g., - ed, -s, -ing).
• Bound grammatical morphemes can be further divided into two types: inflectional morphemes (e.g., -s, -est, -ing) and derivational morphemes (e.g., ful, -like, -ly, un-, dis-).
• Processes of word-formation can be described.
Haspelmath (2002) regards morphemes as morphological atoms, the ultimate elements of morphological analysis. Morphemes such as prefixes and suffixes, when affixed to a root, modify the meaning of the root in terms of class, gender, place, and time and word category.
Morphemes can also be regarded as meaning moulders.