Related Nouns
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A handful of noun roots appear in multiple noun classes with different, related meanings.
Gloss | Noun | Class | Gloss | Noun | Class |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
friend | xaarit | f | friendship | nqaarit | n |
woman | otew | ox | womanhood | ndew | n |
baobab tree | ɓaak | l | baobab fruit | ƥaak | n |
palm tree | ndof | n | palm fruit | orof | ol |
tree sp. | mbamb | n | fruit of tree sp. | pamb | l |
There are indications of derivational processes along semantic grounds, e.g., from a person to a quality of that person, and from a tree to its fruit. However, neither of these processes is productive, and there are not enough examples to generalize, particularly with regard to the source and target noun classes.