Some problems of class descriptions in Bantu with special reference to Kiswahili

The lecture presents Kiswahili classes and discusses the problems of their description in Kiswahili and the Bantu languages today. It argues that the mixing of semantic and morphological criteria in class descriptions, for example, leads to inconsistencies since the semantics cannot be verified as generating actual morphological units and their allomorphic distributions and agreements. It also argues that number is not necessarily coterminous with classes as systems and so a view of classes as principally number classes is inadequate in a scientific grammar of Bantu. It suggests that the best approach to Bantu classes is one based on a system of matrix frameworks and projections within which all other criteria about classes beccome sub-systems. For this reason, I argue that the classes should be viewed as genetic classes based on the class projection principle proposed in Amidu (1997).