This study, conducted by Kanampiu et al. (2025), investigates how native isiXhosa speakers perceive and process noun class (NC) information, particularly focusing on the semantic coherence of NC prefixes. The research aims to determine whether speakers treat certain NCs as semantically specified, using an auditory lexical decision task to assess responses to pseudowords that combine NC prefixes with noun stems from different classes.

The experiment involved 90 isiXhosa speakers who evaluated auditory stimuli consisting of real words and pseudowords. The analysis compared responses to semantic violation items—where NC prefixes were mismatched with semantically incompatible noun stems—against syntactic violation items. Results indicated that participants consistently rejected syntactic violations, while their responses to semantic violations varied based on the coherence of the NC prefix, suggesting that speakers rely more on morphophonological cues than on inherent semantic features.

The findings contribute to our understanding of grammatical gender systems, particularly in Bantu languages, by highlighting the complex interplay between semantics and morphophonology in noun class processing. This research has implications for language technology and translation studies, as it underscores the importance of semantic coherence in language representation and processing.

Source: glossa-journal.org