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.