The Zulu locative prefix ku- revisited: a corpus-based approach

This article re-examines the distribution of the class 17 locative prefix ku- and its variants kwi- and ko- in the locativisation of nouns in Zulu. To this end an electronic corpus of 5 million running Zulu words—the University of Pretoria Zulu Corpus (PZC)—is queried. We indicate how PZC can be used to highlight previously under-emphasised and overlooked aspects of a seemingly well-documented language feature such as the class 17 locative prefix ku-. Analysing the output proffered by PZC—an organic corpus that has been organised chronologically, and that consists of a number of sub-corpora stratified according to genre—enables us to reach conclusions regarding not only the frequencies with which the variants ku-, kwi- and ko- of the class 17 locative prefix are used, but also regarding the possible changes in use that these prefixes have undergone with time. We also show how these prefixes relate to each other in the different sub-corpora.