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3 - Morphology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2022

Paul Newman
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Summary

Hausa’s rich morphology employs prefixes, infixes, and suffixes, the latter with fixed tone melodies. Reduplication is very common. ‘Feminatives’ were created by adding a feminine suffix to words that were already feminine. Plural formation reflects consonant changes such as Klingenheben’s Law and the loss of final nasals. An ongoing drift has been the change of plural nouns into singulars. Similarly one has ‘frozen pluractionals’, i.e., erstwhile pluractionals without simple counterparts. The elaborate ‘grade system’ developed from basic verbs ending in /a/ or /i/ plus synchronically semantically empty CV suffixes and/or an adverb-like extensions such as totality and ventive. Different grades serve as transitivizers and intransitivizers. The ‘efferential’ grade manifests two originally distinct extensions, *-asi and *-da. Singular ethnonyms come from language names, the initial ba- being a reflex of the word ‘mouth’. The plural counterpart with -awa derives from a formative indicating ‘community’. Derivatives indicating agentive, locational, and instrumental are described including ‘pseudo-agentives’, i.e., words with agentive form but without agentive meaning.

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A History of the Hausa Language
Reconstruction and Pathways to the Present
, pp. 88 - 173
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Morphology
  • Paul Newman, Indiana University
  • Book: A History of the Hausa Language
  • Online publication: 24 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009128070.004
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  • Morphology
  • Paul Newman, Indiana University
  • Book: A History of the Hausa Language
  • Online publication: 24 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009128070.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Morphology
  • Paul Newman, Indiana University
  • Book: A History of the Hausa Language
  • Online publication: 24 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009128070.004
Available formats
×