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Noun classes
In a noun class system all nouns are marked by an affix; usually one affix
signals a singular noun and another signals a plural form. Since these affixes
cannot be predicted by phonological or semantic factors, all nouns have to be
assigned to classes on the basis of their singular and plural forms. The affixes
may be prefixes or suffixes or both, and the number varies from language to
language. Most noun class systems have an accompanying concord system; i.e.,
other elements in the clause particularly other elements within the noun phrase
itself, such as determiners, adjectives, or numerals and frequently the verbs
also are marked by an affix selected according to the class of the noun.
Similarly there are sets of pronouns, and the selection of the pronoun in a
particular clause is determined by the class of the noun to which the pronoun
refers. Frequently the same syllable that marks the noun is repeated with these
other elements; or, if not the identical syllable, a form that has a phonetic
resemblance to it is instead repeated.
These features may be illustrated by an example from Swahili. Notice that in the
sentence wa-tu wa-le wa-mefika (consisting of noun, demonstrative, and verb,
meaning those people have arrived'), concordial elements link all three parts of
the sentence by the prefix wa-. This may be compared to the singular
construction m-tu yu-le a-mefika that person has arrived.'
No complete explanation has been found for the fact that in some languages the
concordial elements are prefixes and in others suffixes, and in a few languages
both prefixes and suffixes are used to mark the nouns. There is some evidence
that the older forms were prefixes and that changes from prefixes to suffixes
have occurred in some languages. This change may have involved a binder at the
end of a noun phrase that gave rise to suffixes and the eventual loss of the
prefixes.
The number of noun classes varies from language to language. Within the Atlantic
branch, for instance, the number of noun classes varies from 3 to nearly 40. In
the Gur branch 11 classes are most commonly found. In Bantu languages 12 to 15
noun classes frequently occur, and early Bantu, as reconstructed by scholars, is
thought to have had some 23 noun classes.
It is very likely that, originally, semantic considerations determined which
affixes marked a particular noun class. All humans might be marked with the same
affix and all animals with another, all body parts with another, all liquids
with another, and so on. But these semantic categories have broken down, and
meaning is no longer a reliable predictor of the noun class to which a
particular noun may belong.
Most linguists accept the probability that Proto-Niger-Congo had a noun class
system, though not all Niger-Congo languages have retained it. Many languages
exhibit a partial retention; e.g., there may be a much-reduced system with only
a small number of classes, or, similarly, traces of the noun class system may be
evident but the concordial features have been lost so that no system of
agreement exists between the noun and its qualifiers and/or verb.
Tone
Most Niger-Congo languages have tonal systems, most commonly with two or three
contrasting levels of pitch (though four levels are also found and very
occasionally even five). The feature of down-step frequently occurs, with the
high tone that occurs after a low tone being lower than the preceding high tone.
Tonal patterns are often complicated by what are known as floating tones.
Frequently, when a syllable is deleted or when vowels are elided, the tones
carried by those syllables are retained, and they interact with preceding and/or
succeeding tones to result in tonal perturbations.
Another common feature is that the level of tone is lowered after the occurrence
of certain depressor consonants, namely voiced fortis obstruents. The function
of tone varies from language to language; sometimes it marks grammatical
features, sometimes lexical contrasts. In general, the languages with more tone
levels use tone to distinguish lexical items rather than grammatical
constructions.
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