Corpus-based linguistic investigation for the South African Bantu languages: a Northern Sotho case study

Abstract

The advent of electronic corpora has revolutionized linguistic investigation internationally and is starting to make inroads into the study of the South African Bantu languages. In this article, it is argued that the move from traditional language studies to corpus-based investigation would be a natural one for South African Bantuists, since it proffers a familiar methodology in a new guise. To illustrate the value and potential of corpus-based investigation, a case study was done on Northern Sotho adjectives, highlighting certain semantic aspects which have hitherto not been noted by grammarians, and illustrating the historical relationship between adjectives and enumeratives.