Sentential and proverbial morphological structures of Christian theonyms in Bemba

Abstract

Drawing on Bemba, a Bantu language primarily spoken in northern Zambia, we interrogate the Christian theonyms to account for their complex morphological structures, while highlighting the wealth of information on the Bemba society and their sociocultural environment. For data, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis were employed. Thus, the article highlights two morphological structures, one being a sentential structure that consists of a subject and a predicate, and the other a proverbial structure that feeds into standard metaphoric and paradigmatic forms. Overall, the theonyms show the rich Bemba nominal and verbal morphology, as well as the sociocultural narratives of the Bemba people.

Keywords

• sentential structures
• proverbial structures
• Bemba
• Christian theonyms
• lexical morphology