ABSTRACT
Noun class systems are a strong areal feature in Africa. Heine (1982) reports that two thirds of the approximately 600 African languages he surveyed have noun classes. In all branches of Niger-Congo, except Mande, the simple noun can usually be analyzed as consisting of a stem and an affix, normally a prefix (Welmers 1973:159). This is especially true for Bantu where nouns are categorized into numerous ‘noun classes’ on the basis of the prefixes that they take.
