R e s e a r c h 

T e a c h i n g 

C V 

R e s e a r c h 
S t u d e n t s 

H o m e 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Linguistics and English Language Department

1. The Place of Hausa within the Afroasiatic Family

2. Published Work on Hausa

3. Main Syntactic Features

4. Wh Type Constructions

5. Copular Constructions

6. Selected bibliography

0. Introduction

This page is intended as a brief introduction to Hausa. In Section 1 some general information about the 'family background' of Hausa is presented, followed by a brief summary of published work on the language in Section 2. An introduction to the major syntactic features of the language is presented in Section 3. In Sections 4 and 5 some data are presented which exemplify the types of constructions which are the focus of my current research.

 

1. The Place of Hausa within the Afroasiatic Family

Hausa is a Chadic language belonging to the larger family of Afroasiatic languages, which, alongside Chadic, has four other main branches: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber and Cushitic. (See Crystal 1987). The Afroasiatic Family is the major language family of North Africa, and spreads as far as the Eastern Horn of Africa and across into South West Asia.

  The Chadic group covers an area from Northern Ghana and Benin, across Northern Nigeria and into the Republic of Niger (Barreteau & Newman 1978). Pawlak (1994) estimates that there are in excess of 150 Chadic languages, overwhelmingly SVO, with a small number displaying VSO word order (among these are Gude, Lamang, Margi, Bidiya and Podoko).

  The Chadic group has been subject to various classifications; the one assumed here is based on Newman's (1977) classification of the Chadic group as detailed in Barreteau & Newman (1978). Newman (1977) divided the Chadic group into three main branches: West, Biu Mandara, and East, with a fourth branch (Masa) which contains six closely related languages which are poorly documented. Within the three main branches of Chadic, Newman (1977) divided the groups into subgroups, which list closely related languages. Hausa is located within the A branch of West Chadic, along with Gwandara, the Bole-Tangale Group, and the Ron Group. For further details see Barreteau & Newman (1978) and references cited therein.

  The (sometimes controversial) claim that Chadic belongs within the Afroasiatic has been established in particular on the basis of lexical and morphological similarities which point towards a common 'genetic unity' (Schuh 1982; Pawlak 1994 and references cited there).

  Hausa is without question the most widely spoken Chadic language; in fact Schuh (1982) describes it as coming second only to Arabic in terms of the number of native speakers on the African continent. Hausa is spoken mainly in northern Nigeria as a first language, but also widely in surrounding areas, including the Republic of Niger, where it is also the majority language. Hausa was estimated by Barreteau and Newman (1978) to have at that time upwards of 20 million native speakers.

  Hausa is, aside from English, the lingua franca of Northern Nigeria and has a well documented written tradition, including an abundance of written literature. Hausa was originally written in Arabic script (Ajami), but since the time of British colonial influence has been written in Roman script. Hausa is also broadcast widely on the radio (which includes a section at the BBC World Service in London), and is also taught in several Universities around the world, including SOAS (http://www.soas.ac.uk) and UCLA (http://www.ucla.edu).

  There is considerable dialectal variation to be found in a language as widely spoken as Hausa, and this may be manifested in terms of differing vocabulary as well as having an effect on syntactic and morphological elements in the language. The dialect spoken in the Kano area is considered 'standard Hausa' and is distinguishable from the Western dialect (spoken in the Sokoto area), as well as from the dialects spoken in the Republic of Niger (Barreteau & Newman 1978). Although dialectal variation does not tend in this case to significantly affect word-order, it may be the case that speakers of different dialects would give differing judgements as to the acceptability of certain strings. The data presented here, where no references are given, have been elicited from a native speaker of the language, Dr Malami Buba, who originates from the Sokoto area.

 

2. Published Work on Hausa

Descriptive grammars and dictionaries of Hausa date back as far as the work of Schön (1843), as described by Barreteau & Newman (1978). Major Hausa dictionaries appeared in the earlier part of this century and include Bargery (1934) and Abraham (1946; 1962). More recent dictionaries include Skinner (1965) and Newman & Ma Newman (1977). Major grammars include Abraham (1941) and, more recent grammars/readers, Skinner (1979), Cowan & Schuh (1976), Furniss (1991) Jaggar (1992; 2001), and Newman (2000).

  As pointed out by Barreteau & Newman (1978) a good deal of linguistic research has been carried out into the grammar of Hausa, and a large body of descriptive material was collected and analysed by Parsons, a comprehensive collection of which can be found in Parsons (1981). Parsons' work includes notably his 'grade system' classification of Hausa verbs into a number of categories based on the correlation between morphological features (for example tones, vowels) and particular semantic features (such as causative, intransitive, partitive). A considerable amount of work has also been done on the tense-aspect system, including Newman & Schuh (1974). For further details see Barreteau & Newman (1978) and references therein, and Newman (1996) for a detailed bibliography of Hausa.

  A number of theses on various aspects of Hausa linguistics have appeared over recent years and include, among those relevant to syntax, McConvell (1973), Jaggar (1985), Tuller (1986a), Junaidu (1987), Yusuf (1991), Abdoulaye (1992), Yalwa (1995), and Green (1997), to name but a few. However in comparison to the European languages which often tend to constitute the focus of linguistic research, particularly where syntax is concerned, many aspects of the Hausa language remain to be fully researched.

 

3. Main Syntactic Features

 

3.1. Tone and Vowel Length

Hausa is a tonal language, which means it uses different tones to mark both lexical and syntactic information. Hausa has a three tone system, such that vowels can be either high, low, or falling. This interacts with vowel length such that Hausa has a ten vowel system, five short vowels and five long vowels (represented here as double vowels), plus two dipthongs. Therefore a lexical item may have several distinct meanings corresponding to the combination of tones and vowel lengths within the element, as the following example from Cowan and Schuh (1976:14) illustrates (where double vowel indicates long vowel, and tones are marked in brackets):

  (1)
daamaa (high-high) 'chance'
daamaa (low-high) 'worry'
daamaa (high-low)'mix'

  Although (1) illustrates lexical use of tone and vowel length, these can also be used in Hausa to mark syntactic distinctions, for example in the case of inflection, as illustrated by (2):

  (2)
yaa (high) 3ms perfective
ya (high) 3ms relative perfective
ya (low) 3ms subjunctive

  Tone and vowel length are not marked in standard Hausa orthography.

 

3.2. Word Order and the Verbal-Inflectional Complex

Hausa is an SVO language in which inflection (INFL) occurs as an independent lexical item from the verb. In Hausa, the verb carries no information for person, number, gender or tense/aspect (although verbal noun forms differ from verbal forms, and imperative mood is marked tonally). All this information is carried by INFL which forms a separate lexical item and is always overt.

  INFL in Hausa reflects a mixed system of both tense (reference to a point in time) and aspect (reference to an action or event being completed or still taking place). Agreement (person, number, gender) is also marked within the inflectional element, such that the agreement morpheme precedes the tense/aspect morpheme. In the cases of perfective and imperfective INFL, aspect only is encoded such that the time-reference of the utterance is interpreted according to context. This is illustrated by the following examples:

  (3)
Audu yanaa kasuwa yanzu
Audu 3ms-imperf market now
'Audu is in the market now'

  (4)
Audu yanaa kasuwa jiya
Audu 3ms-imperf market yesterday
'Audu was in the market yesterday'

  Hausa has a future tense however, and in this case the tense marking morpheme precedes the argreement morpheme:

   (5)
Dalibai zaa su je Nijeriya
students fut 3pl go,Nigeria
'The students will go to Nigeria'

  Hausa also has subjunctive and habitual forms of INFL, and the subjunctive in particular is very commonly used, given the absence of any infinitival form of INFL (see Tuller 1986a). For a careful description of Inflectional elements in Hausa see Tuller (1986a); Yusuf (1991); Newman (2000); Jaggar (2001).

  Hausa, like many other African languages, displays relative marking on INFL, (so called because it is the form which appears in relative constructions amongst others). In other words, in certain contexts INFL has a special form, morphologically marked either by a short vowel or the morpheme k: Hausa displays relative marking on imperfective and perfective forms of INFL, although not in negative constructions. Nor is it present in the case of future or subjunctive constructions. The contexts in which relative marking occurs include Wh type constructions (see Section 4), as well as after certain temporal adverbials and also in a narrative context where a sequence of events is recounted (see Tuller 1986a; 1986b).

 

3.3. The Noun Phrase

Definite determiners in Hausa appear as suffixes on nouns, [-n] for masculine/plural nouns and [-r ] for feminine nouns as (6) and (7) illustrate. Indefinite (non-specific) NPs are unmarked. Specific indefinite determiners (8) and demonstrative determiners (9) precede the noun. The former also inflect for number and gender, and the latter for number. See Yusuf (1991) for a discussion of NP/DP syntax, and Jaggar (2001) for a discussion of different types of determiner in Hausa.

  (6)
Mota-r
car-the
'the car'

  (7)
Mutumi-n
man-the
'the man'

  (8)
Wani mutum
a certain man'

  (9)
Wannan riga
'This gown'

 

3.4. Null Subjects and Objects

As first pointed out by Tuller (1982), Hausa is a pro-drop language, i.e., it licenses its subject NP to be null, like many languages with a rich inflectional system. This is illustrated in (11):

  (10)
Dalibai sun sayi littattafai
students 3pl-perf buy books
'The students bought books'

  (11)
Sun sayi littattafai
3pl-perf buy books
'(they) bought books'

  As is the case generally with pro-drop languages, the subject NP is only present when its referent is not obvious from the discourse context.

  Hausa also allows null object NPs as discussed by Jaggar (1985) and Tuller (1986a). As Jaggar points out, this is only possible in the case of a non-human referent. Tuller (1986a:328;14, 15) gives the following example to show that null objects in Hausa are interpreted as 'true empty pronouns' rather than any kind of abstract argument as in the English cases (see Tuller (1986a) for a full discussion of null objects as pro):

  (12)
A: What did you do yesterday?
B: I read.

  (13)
A: Did you read this book?
B:*Yes, I read.

  (14)
A: Me ka yi jiya?
What 2ms-perf-rel do yesterday
'What did you do yesterday?'

  B: *Naa karanta
1s-perf read

  B: Naa yi karatu
1s-perf do read-VN
'I did reading'

  (15)
A: Kaa karanta wannan littafi?
2Ms-perf read that book
'Did you read that book?'

  B: Ii, naa karanta
yes 1s-perf read
'Yes, I read (it)'

 

3.5. Adverbial Particles

Hausa has a number of elements termed 'adverbial particles' (PRT) (sometimes also called 'modal particles') which may appear in any position in a sentence (subject to some dialectal variation) apart from between a clitic and its host (Tuller 1986a). Since these particles often appear following the subject or topic (16) they are sometimes referred to as 'topic particles' (Junaidu 1987). However adverbial particles may also appear between INFL and the verb (17) and in some cases between a verb and its object (18). Examples of where adverbial particles may not appear involve cases of clitic and host, for example between certain agreement and tense morphemes of the INFL complex, or between a verb and its object in cases where the object is a clitic pronoun (20):

  (16)
Kande dai, taa karanta littafin
Kande PRT 3fs-perf read book-the
'As for Kande, she read the book'

  (17 )
Audu yaa fa ba ni kudi da yawa
Audu 3ms-perf PRT give me money much
'Audu did indeed give me lots of money'

  (18 )
Naa je bakin kogi kuma naa kama fa kifi!
1S-perf go mouth-of river and 1s-perf catch PRT fish
'I went to the river bank and I even caught a fish!'

  (19 )
Audu yanaa son-ta
Audu 3ms-imperf love-her
'Audu loves her'

  (20 )
*Audu yanaa son fa ta
Audu 3ms-imperf love PRT her

 

4. Wh Type Constructions

In this section some data is presented to show the salient features of Wh-type constructions in Hausa. These are referred to as 'Wh-type' since they all involve the displacement of a constituent from its 'base position' to a clause-initial position, as argued by Tuller (1986a). Note that relative marking on INFL occurs in these contexts (example (21) shows a neutral sentence for comparison):

  (21)
Yara sun sayi abinci
Children 3pl-perf buy food
'The children bought food.'

 

4.1. Interrogative Constructions

Yes-No questions in Hausa do not involve any change in word-order but are indicated by a rising intonation (15). Interrogative questions however are formed by Wh-movement of the questioned constituent to clause initial position and this is accompanied by relative marking on INFL:

  (22)
Me yara suka/*sun saya ?
What children 3pl-perf-rel/3pl-perf buy
'What did the children buy?'

 

4.2. Relative Clauses

Relative clauses in Hausa are formed by movement of the head noun to clause initial position. The fronted constituent is followed by a relative marker [(wan)da]:

  (23)
Yaran da suka/*sun sayi abinci...
Children-the that 3pl -perf-rel/3pl-perf buy food
'The children who bought food...'

  For a detailed description of Relative Clauses in Hausa see Jaggar (1998).

 

4.3. Focus Constructions

Focus constructions in Hausa are formed by movement of the focused constituent to clause initial position, and this is also accompanied by relative marking on INFL. The focused constituent may be followed by the element [ne] (masculine/plural) or [ce] (feminine). This element is a non-verbal copula which in my view has a focus-marking role. Upper case indicates the focused constituent:

  (24)
YARA (ne) suka/*sun sayi abinci
children FOC 3pl-perf-rel/3pl-perf buy food
'THE CHILDREN bought food'

 

5. Copular Constructions

Copular constructions in Hausa are formed by the linking of an NP subject with an NP/AP predicate by means of the element [ne /ce]. (25)-(26) show predicational copular constructions:

  (25)
Kande daliba ce
Kande student-f FOC
'Kande is a student'

  (26)
Kande doguwa ce
Kande tall-f FOC
'Kande is tall'

  These constructions may also be equational, i.e., may involve two expressions of the same semantic and syntactic type (definite NPs) :

  (27)
Kande ce yarinya-r da nakee so
Kande FOC girl-the RM 1s-imperf-rel love
'Kande is the girl I love'

  Note that the subject may be null in copular constructions, given that Hausa is a pro-drop language, although as Tuller (1986a) points out the null subject in this case may only be interpreted as third person. This is due to the fact that INFL is absent in these constructions, hence the only features present (on [ne /ce]) are gender and number; as Tuller suggests, third person appears to be the default reading:

  (28)
[pro] haka ne
[pro] thus FOC
'That's right'

  (29)
[pro] malama ce
[pro] teacher-f FOC
'She's a teacher'

  These constructions allow free inversion such that several word order permutations are possible; these correlate with different focus readings, such that the constituent left-adjacent to [ne/ce] always constitutes the focus of the sentence.

 

6. Selected bibliography

Abdoulaye, M.L. (1992) Aspects of Hausa Morphosyntax in Role and Reference Grammar, PhD Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.

   Abraham, R.C. (1946) Dictionary of the Hausa Language, London: University of London Press.

  Abraham R.C. (1941) A Modern Grammar of Spoken Hausa, London: Crown Agents for the Colonies (Published on behalf of the Government of Nigeria).

  Abraham, R.C. (1962) Dictionary of the Hausa Language(2nd edition), London: University of London Press.

   Bargery, G.P. (1934) A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary, London: OUP.

   Barreteau, D. and P. Newman (1978) 'Les Langues Tchadiques' in D. Bareteau (Ed) Inventaire des études linguistiques sur les pays d'Afrique noire d'expression Française et sur Madagascar, Paris: Conseil International de la Langue Française.

   Cowan, J.R. & R.G Schuh (1976) Spoken Hausa, New York:Spoken Language Services, Inc.

  Crystal, D. (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Cambridge: CUP.

  Furniss, G.L. (1991) Second Level Hausa: Grammar in Action, London: SOAS.

  Green, M. (1993) 'Focus and Copular Constructions in Hausa', SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 3: 205-218.

   Green, M. (1996) 'Focus in Copular Sentences: the Interface between Semantics, Syntax and Prosody', SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 6:154-178.

   Green (1997) Focus and Copular Constructions in Hausa. PhD Thesis, SOAS.

  Green, M. (in press) 'The Focus Properties of Copular Sentences', in Ouhalla, J., D.Hayward and D. Perrett (Eds.) Studies in Afroasiatic Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

  Green, M. and P.J. Jaggar (2001) 'Ex-situ and In-situ Focus in Hausa', Cognitive Science Research Papers 527, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex. To appear in Lecarme, J. and J. Lowenstamm (Eds.) Research in Afroasiatic Grammar. [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Series]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

   Jaggar, P.J. (1985) Factors Governing the Morphological Coding of Referents in Hausa Narrative Discourse, PhD Dissertation, UCLA.

   Jaggar. P.J. (1998) 'Restrictive vs. Nonrestrictive Relative Clauses in Hausa: where Morphosyntax and Semantics Meet' Studies in African Linguistics 27,2:199-237.

   Jaggar, P.J. (1992) An Advanced Hausa Reader, SOAS.

  Jaggar, P.J. (2001) Hausa, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

   Junaidu, I. (1987) Topicalization in Hausa, PhD Thesis, Indiana University.

   McConvell, P. (1973) Cleft Sentences in Hausa? A Syntactic Study of Focus, PhD Thesis, SOAS.

   Newman, P. (1977) 'Chadic Classification and Reconstructions', Afroasiatic Linguistics 5,1:1-42.

   Newman, P. and R. Ma Newman (1977) Sabon Kamus na Hausa zuwa Turanci, Ibadan: University Press Limited.

   Newman, P. (1996) African Linguistics Bibliographies: Hausa and the Chadic Language Family, Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

  Newman, P. (2000) The Hausa Language: an Encyclopedic Reference Grammar. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

   Newman, P. and R.G. Schuh (1974) 'The Hausa Aspect System', Afroasiatic Linguistics 1.1.

   Parsons, F.W. (1981) Writings on Hausa Grammar: the collected papers of F.W. Parsons (edited by G.L. Furniss), London:SOAS.

   Pawlak, N. (1994) Syntactic Markers in Chadic, University of Warsaw.

   Schuh, R.G. (1982) 'The Hausa Language and its Nearest Relatives', Harsunan Nijeriya 12:1-24

   Shön, J.F. (1843) Vocabulary of the Haussa Language (Part I. English and Haussa, Part II Haussa and English) and phrases and specimens of translations; to which are prefixed the grammatical elements of the Haussa language, London: Church Missionary Society.

   Skinner, N. (1965) Kamus na Turanci da Hausa, Zaria: NNPC.

   Skinner, N. (1979) A Grammar of Hausa, Zaria: NNPC.

   Tuller, L. (1982) 'Null Subjects and Objects in Hausa', Journal of Linguistic Research 2.2.

   Tuller, L. (1986a) Bijective Relations in Universal Grammar and the Syntax of Hausa, PhD Thesis, UCLA.

  Tuller, L. (1986b) 'Tense Features and Operators in Hausa', MS., UQAM.

   Yalwa, L.D. (1995) Issues in Hausa Complementation, PhD Thesis, UCLA.

   Yusuf, M.A. (1991) Aspects of the Morphosyntax of Functional Categories in Hausa, PhD Thesis, University of Essex.