Agreement is the engine

The class of a noun decides the form of the words that agree with it. The word for "of" shows how.

After this unit

Explain how the class of a noun decides the form of the words that agree with it.

One noun decides the words around it

In Kimbundu, the class of a noun decides the form of other words in the sentence. Chatelain calls this agreement and says it is very important to learn well. Nouns, verbs and adjectives must all agree with the noun they refer to. This unit shows the idea with one small word: the word for "of".

How the word for "of" is built

The word for "of" is the concord prefix of the noun you start with, plus a. The concord prefix is the prefix that words agreeing with the noun take. It is not always the prefix on the noun itself. A noun of class 1 starts with mu-, but its concord prefix is u-, so its word for "of" is wa, not mwa. In most classes the two prefixes are the same. A noun of class 7 has the prefix ki-, its concord prefix is ki-, and its word for "of" is kya. A concord prefix that ends in u or i turns into w or y before a. One that ends in a absorbs the new a.

From prefix to marker

Chatelain gives the concord prefix of each class beside its noun prefix. They differ for class 1, and class 9 has no noun prefix to build on. The word for "of" always comes from the concord prefix.

Class	Noun prefix	Concord prefix	Word for "of"
1	mu-	u-	wa
2	a-	a-	a
6	ma-	ma-	ma
7	ki-	ki-	kya
8	i-	i-	ya
9	none	i-	ya
12	ka-	ka-	ka
13	tu-	tu-	twa
14	u-	u-	wa

One possessor, four markers

In all four phrases below, the woman is the second noun. Only the first noun changes class, and the middle word changes with it.

Class of the first noun	Phrase	Meaning
7 (Chatelain III)	kinama kya muhatu	the woman's leg
8 (Chatelain III)	inama ya muhatu	the woman's legs
12 (Chatelain X)	kamona ka muhatu	the little child of the woman
13 (Chatelain X)	twana twa muhatu	the little children of the woman

The noun possessed decides, not the possessor

Chatelain states the rule directly: agreement always follows the noun that is possessed, and never the possessor. Compare the hunter's gun with the hunter's guns. The hunter stays the same. The middle word changes, because the gun is class 14 and the guns are class 6.

Class of the first noun	Phrase	Meaning
14 (Chatelain V)	uta wa mukongo	the hunter's gun
6 (Chatelain IV, V)	mauta ma mukongo	the hunter's guns

A note on the dictionary. The words ka, ma and twa are dictionary entries, and the dictionary describes them as forms meaning "of them". Here they are the word for "of". The dictionary still lists the words for "of" in classes 14, 8 and 7 under the older spellings ua, ia and kia, so wa, ya and kya are written here without a link.

Agreement reaches further

The word for "of" is the first of several words that take their form from the class of the noun. Chatelain lists verbs and adjectives among them. Later units teach each one, and every one starts from the class of the noun.

Go back to the classes

Where this comes from

Chatelain, Grammatica elementar do Kimbundu (Loanda, 1889), printed pages 10, 11, 12 and 14 — agreement and the genitive; every phrase is his example, respelled
The 1940s Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary this site is built from — every dictionary word