A diachronic perspective on variable copulative prefixes with special reference to Sepedi

Abstract

The use of variable copulative prefixes in copulative structures is an unusual phenomenon, since a verbal element—in this case a subject agreement morpheme—is prefixed directly to a nonverbal complement. In this article it is argued that these prefixes are the grammaticalized remnants of full copulative verbs. This point of view is illustrated by means of both synchronic and diachronic evidence. It is furthermore indicated that the semantic nature of the copulative verb stem -le and its inability to take the normal inflections for tense and aspect are contributing factors to its deletion from copulative structures.