Irregular forms of the Zulu locativised noun

Abstract

The Zulu locativised noun has a suffix {-ini} which, in a number of specific nouns, is irregular in the sense of being phonologically reduced or absent. These irregular samples are clustered near the upper (high frequency) end of a frequency list of locativised nouns. This article postulates that irregularity in locativised nouns is a result of the high frequency of those nouns, a fact which is borne out by similar phenomena in other languages as well as elsewhere in the grammar of Zulu.