Zulu

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Verbs

"uyambona"
"u-ya-m-bon-a"
he is seeing her
  • u - subject morpheme
  • ya - tense marker of present tense (the so called "long form")
  • m - subject morpheme
  • -bona - verb stem consisting of bon - verb root and -a the categorial morpheme[1]


u-baba u-bon-a um-ntwana
the father sees the child
u-baba aka-bon-i um-ntwana
the father doesn't see the child
u-baba u-zo-bon-a um-ntwana
the father will see the child
  • zo - nearer future
u-yo-m-bon-a
he will see it
  • yo - far future


u-bon-ile
he saw
u-m-bon-ile
he saw it
wa-bon-a
he saw it long ago
aka-m-bon-anga
he didn't see it
  • aka is the negative morpheme for nouns in class 1 (like ubaba)
aku-zu-m-bon-a
he will not see it


ba-ya-bon-ana
they see each other
  • -ana indicates reflexive

Notes

  1. the categorial morpheme is the last part of the verb stem indicating certain grammatical and semantic information