Developed within the cross-linguistic framework of meteorological constructions formulated by Eriksen, Kittilä and Kolehmainen, the present article reviews and analyses manners of the encoding of precipitation events in isiXhosa (S 41). These include expressions of rain, hail, sleet, and snow. Overall, the evidence provided corroborates various synchronic and diachronic aspects of the framework posited by Eriksen et al. Furthermore, the study reveals several properties of precipitation constructions in isiXhosa that may have implications for a broader typological theory: greater complexity in the encoding of the event of rain in comparison to the other types of precipitation; lack of uniformity with respect to the morphosyntactic encoding of precipitation phenomena; onomatopoeic sources of precipitation verbs and nouns, and their relation to ideophones; presence of the expletive predicate type in non-Indo-European languages; and certain regularities concerning the argument structure of precipitation verbs, their (in)transitivity and valency changing processes.

中文翻译：

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西希萨省的降水构造

本文是在Eriksen，Kittilä和Kolehmainen提出的气象结构的跨语言框架内开发的，本文回顾并分析了isiXhosa中降水事件的编码方式（S 41）。这些包括雨，冰雹，雨夹雪和雪的表现。总体而言，所提供的证据证实了Eriksen等人提出的框架的各种共时性和历时性。此外，这项研究揭示了伊西霍萨（IxiXhosa）降水构造的若干特性，这可能对更广泛的类型学理论产生影响：与其他类型的降水相比，降雨事件编码的复杂性更高；在降水现象的形态句法编码方面缺乏统一性；降水动词和名词的拟声源，及其与发音器的关系；非印欧语言中存在谓词类型；以及某些关于沉淀动词的论证结构，它们的（及物性）和化合价变化过程的规则。