Taljard, Elsabe (Elizabeth)De Schryver, Gilles-Maurice2016-08-182016-06Elsabé Taljard & Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (2016) A corpus-driven account of the noun classes and genders in Northern Sotho, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 34:2, 169-185 DOI:10.2989/16073614.2016.1206478.1607-3614 (print)1727-9461 (online)10.2989/16073614.2016.1206478http://hdl.handle.net/2263/56400This article offers a distributional corpus analysis of the Northern Sotho noun and gender system. The aim is twofold: first, to assess whether the existing descriptions of the noun class system in Northern Sotho are corroborated by information provided by the analysis of a large electronic corpus for this language, with specific reference to singular-plural pairings, and second, to present a number of novel visualisation aids to characterise a noun class system (in a radar diagram) and a noun gender system (using a two-directional weighted representation) for Northern Sotho in particular, and for any Bantu language in general. The findings include the discovery of two new genders in Northern Sotho (i.e. class pairs 1/6 and 3/10), and also indicate that the Northern Sotho noun class system, and by extension any one for Bantu, should be seen as dynamic.en© NISC (Pty) Ltd. This is an electronic version of an article published in Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 169-185, 2016. doi : 10.2989/16073614.2016.1206478. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies is available online at : http://www.tandfonline.comloi/rall20.Corpus-driven accountNoun classesNorthern SothoHumanities articles SDG-04SDG-04: Quality educationPostprint Article