Resumo

PILON, Suléne; BREED, Adri; FOUCHE-KARSIEN, Nadine  e  WIERENGA, Roné. Grammatical categorisation based on form and function: The subordinate clause in the Afrikaans Home Language curriculum as a case study. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2025, vol.65, n.2, pp.607-623. ISSN 2224-7912.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2025/v65n2a3.

Fuzzy boundaries between grammatical categories have led to undesirable categorisation systems for subordinate clauses in school grammars over the past 100 years. This is evident from the fact that subordinate clauses introduced by the same type of structures (e.g., words belonging to the same part of speech category), and which should therefore logically be considered the same type, are often assigned to different categories based on their syntactic function. Furthermore, although functional criteria are typically used at school level to distinguish between main types of subordinate clauses, these criteria are frequently accompanied by additional formal, syntactic, or semantic considerations. For example, an adverbial subordinate clause is identified by its function (modifying the predicate), its meaning (answering questions, such as "When?"), and its form (being introduced by conjunctions, such as voordat). This combination of criteria further reflects the poorly defined nature, or fuzzy boundaries, of subordinate clause categories. In addition, because meaning is used as a criterion, the boundaries between subcategories are often unclear. As a result, the same subordinate clause (e.g., Jason het te veel kersies geëet, [sodat] hy nou maagpyn het) can be classified in multiple ways: in this case either as an adverbial clause of degree (answering "To what extent?") or as an adverbial clause of contingency (answering "What happened then?"). While fuzzy boundaries between categories are not necessarily considered a shortcoming in linguistics, the boundaries of grammatical categories at school level should be clearly defined. The present study therefore aims to streamline the classification of subordinate clauses, which, according to Den Hertog (1904:35), belong to the higher levels of language development. We propose a new classification system based on the word class that introduces the subordinate clause. In other words, subordinate clauses are categorised according to distinguishable and observable morphosyntactic features. This approach reduces the five types currently taught at school level, namely subject clauses, object clauses, complement clauses, adjective clauses, and adverbial clauses, to three. They are i) adverbial clauses, introduced by subordinating conjunctions other than dat, of, and om; ii) complement clauses, introduced by dat, of, and om; and iii) relative clauses, introduced by a relative pronoun, relative adverb, or pronominal adverb. This entails that subordinate clauses with the same form are consistently assigned to the same category, regardless of their function within a sentence. A comparison between our proposed classification and the five-category system used in current teaching materials highlights the advantages of our approach. We argue that identifying the word class introducing a subordinate clause provides a simpler and more objective starting point, from which other features (such as function and meaning) can be inductively derived. Accordingly, we also describe the typical functions of the three proposed subordinate clause types in the exposition. These syntactic functions can be considered a second level of analysis, but are not essential for initial classification. In contrast, starting with syntactic function (e.g., identifying a clause as a subject) in order to determine its type (e.g., a subject clause) is far more complex, even for teachers. The advantages of our proposed system include objective classification based on observable features, resulting in clear and consistent categorisation. This enables teachers to approach teaching and assessment uniformly and ensures continuity across school phases. Furthermore, our system, unlike the system used in current school grammars, meets all eight requirements of a pedagogical grammar, namely truth, clarity, comprehensibility, process orientation, usefulness, limitation and simplicity, recognisability, and relevance.

Palavras-chave : adjective clause; adverbial clause; Afrikaans Hhome Language; categorisation; complement clause; morphosyntactic criteria; fuzzy boundaries; object clause; pedagogical grammar criteria; relative clause; subject clause; subject complement clause; subordinate clause.

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