Valence Decreasing Processess in Lutsotso

Abstract

This paper analyzes valence decreasing process in the sentence of Lutsotso. Lutsotso is a dialect of the larger Luluhyia, an agglutinative Bantu language of Kenya with very rich morphology. The paper shows how verbal suffixes in Lutsotso affect valence. This is illustrated by the fact that verbs in Lutsotso have derivational morphemes that cause valence by either increasing or decreasing the number of arguments that a verb has at a particular time. In addition, the findings in this paper indicate that the Lutsotso dialect has numerous morphological ways of reducing the valence of a verb which include: the passive, the reciprocal, the reflexives and the stative.