i

ZUBAIRU, BITRUS SAMAILA

PG/MA/13/64956

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MORPHOLOGICAL

PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND HAUSA LANGUAGES

FACULTY OF ART

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY

STUDIES

Digitally Signed by: Content manager’s

Name

Godwin Valentine DN : CN = Webmaster’s name

O= University of Nigeria, Nsukka

OU = Innovation Centre
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TITLE PAGE

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND

HAUSA LANGUAGES

BY

ZUBAIRU, BITRUS SAMAILA

PG/MA/13/64956

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY

STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA NSUKKA. IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENTS FOR
THE AWARD OF MASTER OF ARTS (M.A) DEGREE

SUPERVISOR: DR LAZARUS,C. OGENYI

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DECEMBER, 2015

APPROVAL PAGE

This thesis entitled” Comparative Study of Morphological Processes in English and

Hausa Languages”, has been carefully examined and approved by the Department of English

and Literary studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka as meeting the requirements for the

award of Master of Arts in English as a second language

------------------------------ ----------------------------------

Dr Lazarus Ogenyi Date

(Supervisor)

------------------------------ ----------------------------------
Prof. Damian .U. Opata Date
(Head of Department)

------------------------------ ---------------------------------
External Examiner Date
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DECLARATION

I, Zubairu Bitrus Samaila, hereby declare that this research work titled “Comparative

Study of morphological Processes in English and Hausa Languages” is a product of my effort

accorded to my findings under the supervision of Dr Lazarus. C. Ogenyi; All material

consulted were duly acknowledged by means of work citation.

--------------------------------- -----------------------------------
Zubairu Bitrus Samaila Date
PG/MA/13/64956
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CERTIFICATION

This is to certify that the research work for this dissertation and the subsequent preparation

of this dissertation by Zubairu Bitrus Samaila PG/MA/13/64956 were carried out under

my supervision.

------------------------------------- --------------------------------
Dr. Lazarus Ogenyi Date
Supervisor

--------------------------------------
Prof. Damian .U. Opata
Head of Department
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DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to God Almighty and to my beloved wife and children, Mrs.

Sarah Bitrus Samaila, Rhema Bitrus Samaila, and Agape Bitrus Samaila.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my heartfelt acknowledgement to God Almighty by whose grace and

mercy I survived all forms of challenges; and by whose wisdom and inspiration this work has

been scripted .To Him be all the glory power and honour forever. I must also confess that, i

am indebted to so many people who have laboured with me directly or indirectly to ensure

successful and glorious completion of this work. But few will be registered here for the want

of space.

My profound gratitude goes to Dr. Lazarus, Ogenyi my supervisor who did a

thorough scrutiny of this work that resulted to early completion; I remain grateful to him. Sir i

saw how you took the pain to carefully and meticulously go through the manuscripts of this

work. I am personally convinced beyond every element of doubt that you are a father not only

to your biological children, but to every one God places under you as an academic child. May

God reward the relentless and selfless service you rendered to me.

My appreciation goes to Prof. opata .U. Damian the Head of Department who also took

his time to grill me on the nitty gritty of research in humanities. Thank you Prof. for helping

me to understand the 7th edition of M.L.A works citation. I want to acknowledge all the

lecturers of the Department particularly Prof. Sam Onuigbo, Prof E.J Otaburuagu, Prof

Akwanya, Prof. Inyama, Dr. P.A Ezema, Dr. Mrs. F .O Orabueze, Mr. Okoro, Mr. Moses. O

Melefa, Mr. Kingsley, etc, for responding to my academic quest.

I sincerely express gratitude to my darling wife Mrs Sarah Bitrus Samaila for labouring

for me in the place of prayer which has not only yielded my graduation but saved this work

from lingering . May I quickly acknowledge my two kids Rhema and Agape for standing

with me in the course of my academic sojourn in U. N .N. Thank you Rhema for always

asking your mother “Mummy where is daddy now”? Thank you Agape for denying yourself

the joy of a father for a complete one year. May God seal you with his divine seal.
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I want to acknowledge all my course mates especially Simeon Nwabueze Osogu, Abiola,

Mary Oladipo, Benjamin Odemela, Onyedikachi Okodo, Sandra, Ifeoma, Sumto , Dianah

Yerima Linda, Georgina,Wali Musa, Ruth Chioma Onamba, Mrs Utazy whose

companionship has proved to me that I have been to the Den of lions and my dignity has

been restored. I am proud to have you as course mates.

I am indebted to all the members of graduate Students’ fellowship (GSF) UNN both past and

present who have contributed spiritually to my life. I am particularly grateful to the 2013/2014

Executive committee members with whom I served as the Co-coordinator of the fellowship. It

was an awesome experience. Thank you for all your encouragements. I will like to register my

gratitude to my family members who also stood with me within the period of this academic

pursuit. I remain thankful to my sweet mother Mrs Naomi Bitrus Zubairu, my uncles, aunts,

brothers, and sisters.

This acknowledgment cannot be complete if I fail to appreciate Dr. Ali Ahmadi Alkali of

Languages and linguistics Department, Taraba State University who helped me with materials

on the morphology of Hausa language and that helped to a great extent to my source of data

collection. Liberation team stood with me in prayers too, I am grateful to all of them.

Finally I want to appreciate all that have contributed in one way or the other either

academically financially materially, spiritually or morally. Your name may not have reflected

on this page but God who sees from heaven will reward your labour of love and meet you also

at the point of your needs in Jesus name.

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ABSTRACT

This work aims at investigating the relationships that exist between the English and
the Hausa languages at the level of their morphological processes; and the implication this
relationship will have on the teaching and learning situation. The study adopted a contrastive
analysis theory cum contrastive analysis hypothesis which is an area of linguistic studies that
deals with the scientific study of two or more languages so as to make critical, howbeit,
pedagogical comments on their areas of divergence or convergence. The study discusses and
compares some morphological processes such as back-formation, blending alternation,
affixation, compounding, clipping, coinage, reduplication, acronym, and borrowing in both
languages using the descriptive analysis method. The analyses were based on Kano dialect of
Hausa language which is the standard Hausa dialect. From the analyses, it was discovered
that, morphology which is the study of grammatical rules of word structures in any language
operates in both languages with significant areas of differences and similarities; that English
and Hausa use some processes to create some words; that affixation is one of the processes
found in both English and Hausa; that some of the processes discussed in this study could be
found in one and not in other language; that Hausa language interferes significantly on the
teaching and learning of English as a second language. This research work can be used as a
source of information or rather reference material to subsequent studies in English and Hausa
languages in various components of linguistic structures. It would also provide a premise for
the study and analysis of morphological processes in English and Hausa. Recommendations
on how to overcome the pedagogical problems were offered and conclusion drawn.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title page i
Approval page ii
Declaration iii
Certification iv
Dedication v
Acknowledgments vi
Abstract viii
Chapter One

Introduction 1

1.1 Background to the Study 1

1.2 Statement of the Problem 7

1.3 Objectives of the Study 8

1.4. Significance of the Study 8

1.5 Scope and Delimitation 9

1.6 Research Questions 9

Chapter Two

Literature Review 11

2.0 Introduction 11
2.1 Empirical Studies 11

Chapter Three

Theoretical Framework and Research Methodology 27

3.0 Introduction 27

3.1 Theoretical Framework 27

3.1.1 Contrastive analysis theory 27

3.2 Research methodology 31

3.2. 1 Research Design 31

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3.3 Instruments for Data Collection 32

3.4 Data Collection Technique 33

3.5 Method of Data Analysis 33

Chapter Four

Data Analysis 35

4.0 Introduction 35

4.1 The Comparative Analysis of the Processes in English and Hausa 36

4.1.1 Acronyms 36

4.1.1.1 The Division of Acronyms 36

4.1.2 Affixation 37

4.1.2.1 The Positional Categories of Affixes 38

4.3 Alternation 63

4.3.1 Total Modification in English 63

4.3.2 Partial Modification in English 65

4.3.2.1 Subtraction 68

4.3.3 Partial Modification in Hausa 70

4.4 Backformation 72

4.4.1 The Sources of Back Formants of Words 72

4.5 Blending 73

4.6 Borrowing 73

4.6.1 Loan Blending 78

4.6.2 Loan Shift 78

4.7 Clipping 80

4.7.1 Types of Clipping 80

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4.8 Coinage 82

4.9 Compounding 83

4.9.1 The Elements of Compounding in English 83

4.9.2 The Elements of Hausa Compounds 84

4.9.3 The Combination to Form Compounds in English 85

4.9.4 Regular Compounds 86

4.9.5 Irregular Compounds 86

4.9.6 The Combinations to Form Compounds in Hausa 86

4.10 Reduplication 88

4.10.1 Types of Reduplication in English 88

4.10.1.1 Partial Reduplication in English 88

4.10.1.2 Complete Reduplication in English 89

4.10.1.3 Complete Reduplication in Hausa (Cikakka Nannage) 92

4.10.1.4 Partial Reduplication in Hausa (Ragaggen Nannage) 92

4.11 Morphological Processes Across The Two Language 96

Chapter Five

Summary, Recommendations and Conclusion

5.0 Introduction 103
5.1 Summary 103
5.3 The Research Findings 105
5.3 Recommendations 106

5.4 Conclusion 107

Works Cited 108

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Chapter One

Introduction

5.4 Background to the Study

Language, an indispensable tool for human communication, is studied in divergent

ways. Irrespective of the area in which it is being studied, the most central to language and

relevant to human communication is the word. Words play an integral role in the human

ability to use language with an infinite capacity of expressions. As a result of this, word is

involved in almost all the levels of linguistic studies and analysis. Words are generally

classified into phonological, grammatical, morph syntactic, content and function words.

It is important to note that every word in the lexicon of a native speaker is encoded

with phonological, syntactic, semantic and, above all, morphological information. A native

speaker of a language knows how to structure the words of the speaker in accordance with the

morphological rules of the language, and also how to order the sequence of words correctly to

form expressions or sentences in accordance with syntactic rules. The aspect of linguistics

which deals with words and their entire upshots is morphology. The goal of every

morphological study, therefore, is to discover and make explicit the rules or principles,

patterns, processes and systems that underlie the morphological processes in a language. It is

possible, for instance, to break down Hausa word “budurwai” (girls) into smaller structural

units: “budurwai” = “budurwa” + “i". The analysis here shows that “budurwai” (girls) can be

broken down into two parts. This includes the first part “budurwa”, which refers to something

in the world (+ young + female + human) and the second part “i” indicates a grammatical

category of a number specifying plural. The same approach can easily be applied to the word

“faraa” (started), which can be analyzed thus: “Faraa = ‘fara’ (start) + ‘a’, equivalent to

English past tense morpheme (-ed). However, while” budurwa” can be described as a noun,

“fara” (start) is a verb and the second part ‘-a’ indicates past tense to the verb “fara” (start).
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In morphological terms, the minimal parts of the words that have been analyzed above

are called morphemes. Not only are these morphemes considered as the ultimate elements of

morphological analysis, but they serve as the building blocks of meaning and grammar.

Unlike phonemes, morphemes have a physical, that is phonological and phonetic form, and

they have meaning or function. With this, it is plausible that a morpheme is attached to words

to serve a grammatical purpose as well as a semantic function.

In linguistics, morphology according to Mark Aronoff and Kirsten Fudeman refers to

“the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with

words, their internal structure, and how they are formed” (1). Ephraim Chukwu states that “it

originally means the study of shapes or forms used in biology, but since the middle of 19th

century, it has been used to describe the type of investigation which analyzes all those basic

linguistics elements which are usually in language” (1). George Yule explains that “these

elements are technically known as morphemes in linguistics” (75) Leonard Bloomfield

highlights four morphological types of language as follows:

a. Isolating languages which are those used by the Chinese. They have no bound forms and

a great majority of morphemes remain independent words.

b. Agglutinative language: here, the bound forms are supposed merely to follow one

another, e.g., Turkish.

c. Polysynthetic: these are languages that express, semantically, important elements such

as verbal goals by means of bound forms as does Eskimos.

d. Inflectional language shows a merging of semantically distinct features either in a single

bound forms or in a close united bound forms as when the suffix Ō in a Latin form like

‘amō’ ‘I live’, etc. English is a good example of a fissional or inflected language in

which morphemes are squeezed together and are often changed dramatically in the
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process. All these can be a confusing concept, but looking at the morphology of the

English language in its form, it retains a number of remnants (193).

Morphology, therefore, studies how words are put together from their smallest parts

and the rules governing this process. It is the branch of linguistics which deals with forms of

words in different constructions. Charles Hocket sees morphology as “the grammatical study

of words on construction of morphemes” (200). Eugene Nida states that “morphology is the

study of morphemes and their arrangements in word formation” (100). Morpheme may be

identified by its distribution and certain other characteristics.

The meaning of morpheme has received a lot of controversial ideas from many

linguists. According to Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, morpheme means the way

units are ordered to give meaningful words. Some linguists approach the issue of the meaning

of morpheme as form of units which have a meaning but based their combinations on

distribution, while other linguists see morpheme as form of composite unit. Bloomfield asserts

that we can attribute any meaning of phoneme and cannot analyze the meaning of morpheme

(193). Jacek Fisiak, identifies with Bloomfield Leonard, et al, as the advocates of morphemes

as units that have no meaning on their own (100). Note also that Allan Gleason (208) also

describes morphemes as short sequence of phonemes. Since phoneme is said to be

meaningless, then morpheme as well is meaningless. What then is morpheme?

According to General Basic Dictionary, a morpheme is a linguistic unit of the system

of words distinguishing sounds of a language as ideally represented by single letter of the

letters of alphabet; that is, phonemes are speech sounds. Earlier, however, John Carrol (50)

and his contemporaries describe morpheme as a form which embodies grammatical and

lexical meanings. It is not all morphemes that have meaning. For instance ‘does’ in ‘does he’

is said to be a dummy morpheme because it has no meaning in the context, but has function

which is to show that it is the question and singular; therefore it is a dummy.

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Hocket (199) further asserts that morphemes are the smallest indivisibly meaningful

elements in the utterances of a language. This means that morphemes are indivisible. That is,

they cannot be divided and still have meanings. For example, the word ‘compound’ cannot be

sub-divided into com + pound. Furthermore, David Crystal (300) defines a morpheme as a

smallest bit of a language which has meaning and, moreover, this meaning is different from

the meaning of all other morphemes in the language. What he is saying is that if a morpheme

is added or removed from an utterance, the meaning of the utterance changes.

Crystal identifies morphemes by comparing a wide variety of utterances. He looks for

utterances which are partially the same. A morpheme could be described as the minimal

linguistic unit, but it is not every small unit that is a morpheme as there are other

characteristics that help one to identify a morpheme. According to Nida (100), there are also

some criteria for the identification, recognition and understanding of morphemes.

The length of a word does not determine the number of morphemes in it. For example,

the word “discipline” has ten letters of the alphabet but has one morpheme. Likewise, the

word “category” is a word with eight letters of the alphabet but has one morpheme. The word

“oxen” has four letters of the alphabet but has two morphemes. “ox” is a lexical morpheme

while “-en” is a grammatical morpheme meaning plurality. The same phenomenon is

applicable to the Hausa language. For example, the following words have one morpheme

each:

Tsumagiyaa ---------- cane

Taswiraa ---------- map

Daankaali ---------- potatoe

Kadaandooniya ----------millipede

A morpheme may be a word or part of a word. The form of a morpheme and that of a

word sometimes overlaps so that one concept presupposes the other (John Lyons 32). A
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morpheme is not always an equivalent to a word. For instance, the grammatical unit such as

“dig” and “-er” in English are morphemes while “dig” is a word and can stand on its own, “-

er” cannot stand independently as a word because it is a part of a word. In the Hausa

language, the grammatical unit “manoomaa” (farmers) has ‘-ma’ and ‘noomaa’. While

‘noomaa’ (farming) is a word and can stand on its own to give meaning, ‘-ma’ is a morpheme

that cannot stand independently as a word to make a meaning. In addition, morphemes cannot

be divided into smaller parts without destroying or altering the meaning of the word. For

instance, if the word “straight” is broken into /strei/ and /t/, /strei/ of course has a meaning

which though not related to the meaning of the word “straight” is still a morpheme; but /t/ is a

meaningless remainder. Therefore, /strei/ is not a morpheme so long as the word “straight” is

concerned. Similarly, the word “tauraaroo” (star) cannot be divided into tau + raa + roo

because they are meaningless parts. This therefore, characterizes the word as consisting of a

single morpheme.

Certain morphemes have a specific order in which they must occur. In English, the word

“reconvene” (re-con-vene) cannot be reordered or rearranged as con-re-vene. This second

arrangement is unfamiliar and meaningless to the native speaker of English. The order of

morpheme in the Hausa language is also the same thing. For example, the word “maa+

sooracii” (fearful) cannot be reordered as soo-ra-cii-maa. Therefore, the meaning of a word

depends solely on the meaning and arrangement of the morphemes. Nida maintains that forms

which have common semantic distinctiveness and identical phonemic forms in the entire

occurrence constitute similar forms. This shows that the form such as “-er” as in worker,

singer and stranger are the same morphemes if they have the same meaning.

Furthermore, a morpheme is also recognized by semantic and distributional criteria

without its form being identical. A clear example is in the formation of plural in English. If we

compare the final element in “hands” /z/, “cats” /s/ and “matches” /iz/, there is a common
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meaning (plural), common distribution and common phonological resemblance. Just as the

sound /l/ in “bottle’ does not really contrast in meaning anywhere in English with sound in

“lamp” and just as we talk of the phoneme /l/ being realized by two allomorphs, so the

morpheme plural is realized by different allomorphs /-z/, /-s/ and /iz/. Similarly, the English

morpheme has its allomorphs in the different realizations of past tense as in worked /t/, raised

/d/ and mended /id/.

In addition, morphemes can appear in many different words; that is, morphemes are

recyclable. Word analysis is such a powerful skill because the same morphemes show up over

and over again in different words. For example, “reduce” means to diminish or lower;

“deduce” to infer; “seduce” to lure away; “produce” to bring into being; “induce” to bring on.

It should be noted, therefore, that every word which can be divided into meaningful parts

contains more than one morpheme. The meaning of the word “capsize” for example has to do

with overturning of boat in the water. It is not the same as the additive meaning “cap” (a head-

covering worn by men) and “size” which is the degree of largeness or smallness of an object.

A morpheme must have a relatively stable meaning wherever it occurs; for example, ‘-en’

must display the meaning of “to make” in any environment it occurs. Other examples are

“ensnare”, “frighten”, “brighten”, “darken”, “quicken”, and so on.

The importance of second language learner’s competence in morphological

appropriateness is obviously paramount. Yule George, (126), contends that “grammatical

competence helps greatly in facilitating communicative competence”. In view of this, ESL

learners that lack both morphological and grammatical competence tend to communicate

poorly in both written and spoken forms of English. Aliyu Kamal (20) explains that “English

is an international medium of communication spoken as the second language (L2) in Nigeria

and it is the official language. As such, the need for proficiency is not only desirable but

absolutely necessary”. Ibrahim (208) asserts that “in Nigeria, English continues to be widely
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used as a medium of instruction at all levels of education: primary, secondary and tertiary

institutions. Despite its significance, the standard of Nigerian education is gradually becoming

very poor.” This may not be unconnected with the fact that learners of English as a second

language (ESL) have not adequately understood the word formation processes of the English

language, especially when such processes contradict the word formation processes of their

native language. Therefore, the descriptive nature of the study would reveal the theoretical

significance of morphological processes available in the English and Hausa languages. This

study investigates a theoretical explanation of the facts about morphological processes in the

English and Hausa languages, their areas of similarities and differences and how second

language learners of English will use the processes to effectively form new words. Despite the

fact that there exists various studies that have accounted for the justification of morphological

processes, most second language learners of English do not know how new words are formed

using the process. As such, morphological errors are commonly observed in the written

English of many ESL learners (Naama Friedman, et al. (56) The study has accounted for areas

of similarities and differences in both languages and revealed how effective communication in

English is enhanced among the Hausa learners of the English language using morphological

processes.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Every language of the world has its own word formation processes and the rules

governing the formation. English and Hausa are two different languages with different

linguistic origins, backgrounds, and conditions that make them naturally different. It is

obvious that the morphological differences in English and Hausa words create problems in the

teaching and learning of English, the target language. Despite the fact that scholarly works

have been done on the morphological processes of the Hausa and other languages, yet not

much has been done on the English and the Hausa morphological processes. The researcher
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intended to compare the morphological processes of the English and Hausa languages and

unravel the implications the linguistic differences may have on the adequate teaching and

learning of the second language called English. This research was set to fill this vacuum.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

This study intends to:

1. examine the morphological processes of the English language in comparison with the

Hausa language;

2. find out the characteristic features and distributions of the Hausa morphemes;

3. explore areas of similarities and dissimilarities;

4. find out how this relationship affects the word formation processes of the learners of

English as a second language (ESL) in their written communication; and

5. Suggest ways through which communication competence of the learners of

English as a second language can be facilitated using appropriate word-formation

processes.

1.4. Significance of the Study

The study will be of relevance as follows:

1. It will provide us with an insight into the morphological processes of the English and

Hausa languages;

2. It will improve the knowledge of ESL learners and thus improve both students’ and

teachers’ performances as it relates to the teaching/learning of English as a second

language;

3. It will serve as another step towards finding an explanation to the relationship that

exists between the English and Hausa languages in terms of their word-formation

patterns and processes;

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4. It will serve as a viable and valuable linguistic source of information to the students

that are studying English and Hausa at the tertiary level thereby improve their teaching

methodology with regard to morphological processes.

5. It will help teachers to focus on the areas of differences to enhance students’

understanding of the word-formation processes of the target language (English).

6. It will help authors and teachers of English as a second language to anticipate and

predict what their Hausa students are likely to encounter in English word formation.

This will also equip the teachers with possible solutions to their learners’ challenges;

and

7. The curriculum designers and planners will find help in this study and therefore

fashion school curricula and syllabuses to reflect word formation patterns of both

languages especially in Hausa community- based schools.

1.5 Scope and Delimitation

Language has several areas that can be studied. These areas include phonology,

syntax, morphology and semantics. However, this study accounts for the area of morphology

which is a part of linguistics. This research covers only the morphological processes (word-

formation patterns) of the English and Hausa languages.

1.6 Research Questions

The following research questions are used to generate data about the morphological

processes of the English and Hausa languages.

1. What are the morphological processes obtainable in the English and Hausa languages?

2. What are the characteristic features and distributions of the Hausa morphemes?

3. To what extent do English and Hausa languages share similarities and differences in

their morphological processes?

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4. How do their similarities and dissimilarities affect the learning processes of the Hausa

native speakers?

5. What are the ways through which communication competence of the learners of

English language, be enhanced using appropriate word-formation processes?

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Chapter Two

Literature Review

2.0 Introduction

This chapter takes a look at the available literature on the subject under investigation. The

intention of the chapter is to give insight into what other scholars have done or otherwise on

the problem, ascertain the current state of the art and/ or methodological approaches and as

well as establish the gap in field that justifies this study.

2.1 Empirical Studies

Akande Akimade studied the competence in English morphology of some senior

secondary school one students. He considered eight morphological processes, namely:

suffixation, prefixation, compounding conversion, acronym, blending, clipping, and

reduplication with a view to finding out which of these processes are mostly employed by

Nigerian learners of English. The elicitation procedure used was written essays. The result

revealed that there is a discrepancy in the subjects’ acquisition and mastery of word-formation

processes. This is because, while some of the processes are not regularly used, suffixation

which is the most regularly used posed the greatest difficulty to the subjects. (36)

In a related study, Akande (310) investigated the acquisition of the eight inflectional

morphemes in English. The data used for the study were drawn from six Yoruba-speaking

learners of English who were selected from four secondary schools in Oke-Igbo, Ondo State.

He used two types of elicitation technique, written English composition and grammar

exercise. The result indicated that, in the analysis of the compositions, the subjects have a

poor mastery of use of English past participle, possessive inflection, past tense inflection and

plural inflection. However, in the grammar exercise, the subjects performed relatively well as

none of them got below 10 out of the 25 questions…’ (Akande, 323).

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Ayo Babalola, and Akimade Akande, conducted another study in which they

investigated some linguistics problems of Yoruba learners of English. They grouped the

problems into phonological or ethnographic, morphological and syntactic problems. They

argued that morphological—related problem is quite relevant. They further claimed that

English is not free from inconsistency in the area of morphology. There are ambiguities which

usually compound learners’ problems. They further observed that a morpheme may be

phonologically conditioned; as a result of that, it may have allomorphs. For examples ‘-in’

which means “not” is realized orthographically as in ‘indecent’; insignificant is realized as ‘-

im’ in impossible, as ‘-un’ in unfair, as ‘-ir’ in irrelevant and as ‘-il’ in illegal. They also

illustrate the morphological inconsistency by saying that suffix –er usually means “the person

who performs an action indicated by verb”. So, the word writer/producer/teacher means

somebody who writes/produces/teaches” but the word brother/sister does not mean somebody

who brothes/sists, neither does type-writer also means “somebody who type-writes” (250). If

someone who sings or writes is a singer or a writer respectively, why shouldn’t somebody

who cooks, gossips, cheats, sponsors be a cooker, gossiper, cheater, and sponsorer? In English

as a second language environment (ESLE), such as we have in Nigeria, learners are bound to

make mistakes such as identified above.

Aremo Bolaji carried out a study on conversion in English, i.e. nouns which are

derived from adjectives through the process of conversion. He examined Hornby’s Oxford

Advanced Learners’ Dictionary of Current English (edited in 2000 by Wehmier) and Collings

Cobuild English Language Dictionary (edited in 1987 by Sinclair) for several examples of

nouns illustrating adjectives – nouns conversion in English. He grouped them into various

semantic classes according to the meanings expressed by those adjectives converted to nouns

(200). Heidic Dulay and Marina Burt carried out a study on the acquisition of eight English

grammatical morphemes which they call functors. The subjects used were one hundred and
 13

fifty- one (151) Spanish speakers in the US whose ages range between 5 to 8 years. They used

bilingual syntax measure (BSM) in order to elicit samples of speech from the subjects. The

subjects consist of three groups: the East Harlem group, the Sacramento group, and the San

Ysidro group. These groups have varying exposures to English. They discovered that, “within

each group those morphemes in which subjects were most accurate and those in which they

were least accurate were inconsistently the same. The result concludes that ESL speakers find

some grammatical morphemes difficult to acquire regardless of their length of exposure to

English. (40)

Arthur McNeil, studied the “vocabulary knowledge profiles: evidence from Chinese-

speaking ESL teachers”. He studied two groups of Chinese-speaking ESL teachers, the Hong

Kong group and the Beijing group which were made use of as the subjects. The aspect of

English tested, were word meaning, phonology, morphology and sentence production. The

study was concerned with the aspect that deals with morphology. He noted that some

morphological errors occur as a result of morphological deviant when forming adjectives from

the nouns. Examples some of the subjects wrote such morphological deviant form of the noun

surgery” as surgerive, surgerions, surgeral, and so on. He concluded that knowledge of

meaning operates at word meaning and their ability to operate on morphological rule

correctly. The extent to which morphological knowledge in L2 relies on conscious processing

merits further investigation (56).

Farogi-Shah Yasmeen conducted a study on the production latencies of

morphologically simple and complex verbs in aphasia. In this study, he investigated the effect

of morphological complexity (presence vs absence) of affixes on verb production. The result

indicated that the morphological complexity plays little role in production difficulty and a
 14

difficulty in usage of contextually appropriate verbs inflections, rather than in morphological

encoding, is suggested. (725)

Economou Elexandra, et al, studied the factors affecting production of verbs inflection

in Greek aphasia. The errors of seven aphasic individuals performing a sentence competing

task were categorized into errors in morphological suffixation, word form errors and mixed

errors. The result revealed that participants made more morphological errors than either word

form or mixed errors. (20)

Another research conducted by Gabriele Miceli on morphological errors and the

representation of morphology in lexical semantic system revealed that neuropsychological

studies support that morphology is represented autonomously both at the level of word-

meaning and at the level of word form. In out-put process, morphology organizes semantic

information which indicates that the activities of lexical representations of roots and affixes

are composed before production. (93)

Abukakre Olubunmi, conducted a study on the functions of compounding in Hausa,

Igbo and Yoruba Languages using theoretical orientation of descriptive linguistics to show the

crucial role of the process of compounding in the lexicons of the three languages. In doing

this, he surveyed how compounding enriches the languages and enhances communication in

terms of expression of new concepts and ideas. The study justified that functional relationship

between the phonology and morphology of the languages contributes to the word formation

processes. It also revealed that, most African languages have internal capabilities for lexical

expansion, and do not always borrow words from other languages. The study concluded that

compounding is a universal process of language development that is found across languages;

although it manifests varying features. (42)

 15

O. Abubakre also examined affixation, a morphological process in Hausa and Eggon

languages with a view to describing and analyzing its manifestation into two languages. The

similarities and differences in the affixation of Hausa and Eggon were the focus. He chose

two genetically different languages to justify the fact that some of the universal properties of

the natural language do vary from language to language irrespective of their genetic

relationship. Hausa, being a member of Chadic sub-group of Afro-Asiatic language family

and Eggon, being classified as a Benue-Congo language which is a sub-member of a Niger-

congo family. The study had shown among others that, affixation in Hausa and Eggon either

derivational or inflectional performs a productive role in the lexicons of the languages.

Waya David carried out a study on contrastive analysis of Tiv and English

Morphological processes where he examined the inflectional patterns evident in Tiv and

contrasted with English language, with a view of detecting their similarities and differences.

The study was an exercise in applied linguistics which adopted a contrastive analysis method

in the description of the languages. He found out that in contrasting the morpheme distribution

in the languages, similarities and differences are likely to influence teaching/learning of

English by the native speakers of Tiv language. Unlike English the inflectional morphemes in

Tiv language vary mostly on tone. In other words there are some rules on the plural formation

or pronunciation. It was also indicated that there is set of Tiv morphemes referring to its

particular gender as observed in English, whether plural or past tense; the affixes in Tiv

language are only placed at the level of suffixation and infixation.

The study further observed that difficulties in teaching or learning a language is most

experienced in areas of differences. However, learning difficulties can also be in areas of

similarities. The study therefore advocated that language teachers and syllabus planners

should make adequate use of the finding of contrastive or error studies as reference guide in

designing syllabus for the teaching learning of the second language.

 16

Christiana Andrew conducted a study on a comparative analysis of English and Igala

morphological processes. The notion of comparative analysis was essentially aimed at

establishing the possibility of difference or similarities in any field of interest. In the study

also the comparison is aimed at establishing the points of divergence and convergence in an

international language (English) and locally spoken language (Igala). Firstly the theory of

grammar universal proposes that all languages whatever their compositions and dispositions

are structurally and semantically identical. Secondly, the notion of universality of morphology

in the same vein proposes that there exists the concept of morphemes and morphological

processes in all languages of the world. These claims account for the reason why the research

looked at the morphological processes as used in both languages. The researcher had

examined the notion of morphological processes in Igala.

To establish what processes were employed and how the processes occurred in

English, data had been generated for analysis as the findings of the research used the concept

of Halliday (1975) Scale and Category theory, and Nida (1949) six principles for identifying

morphemes in the study of both languages, the result had shown that the component of

morphology in the study of natural human languages is exhibited in the structure of the two

languages (Igala and English) and the concept of universality of morphology as widely

acclaimed in the study of natural human languages exists in the structure of both languages.

However not all morphological processes are applicable in both languages. While there exists

some points of commonalities, there equally, exists some points of dissimilarities.

Though the concept of morphology is eminent in both languages, it is unique to both

respectively. Igala language is more agglutinating and semantic inclined than its English

counterpart, which is more syntactic and inflectional. (6)

 17

Zubairu Hussaini, and Waziri Ahmed, Carried out an investigation on nominal

reduplication process in Hausa and Yoruba languages. They discussed reduplication as one of

the three main morphological processes i.e. Affixation reduplication and modification in

Hausa and Yoruba languages. From the three processes of word formation, they considered

reduplication process in Hausa and Yoruba. Complete and partial reduplication were

identified and illustrated. The reduplication process led to derivation and formation of

nominal in two languages, and the processes also change grammatical category of a word, like

changing adjectives, adverbs, nouns etc. to a nominal category.

The study had equally revealed the process of reducing the intensification function of

a word to a lesser function among the two languages. It also expressed how the reduplication

change the grammatical item to specify a gender function, plurality, intensification of action

etc. in a normal derivation. It was also found out that despite the fact that Hausa and Yoruba

are entirely from different African language groups, but nominal reduplication occurs in the

two languages. For instance Mu’azu (10) observes that Hausa is a gender language while

Yoruba from an investigation is not. This indicated that the gender languages, among African

languages are more in acquisition than the non-gender ones.

Aliyu Salihu, Undertook a study on morphological processes of Gbari and English

from the contrastive angle. In the study, he investigated the similarities and differences

between the two languages. He used Gbari expressions which have been generated through

interview and casual conversation. He classified and discussed the data obtained according to

different morphological processes which include affixation reduplication, replacives, clipping

(subtraction), borrowing (loans) conversion, coinage, elision and compounding. The result

indicated that Gbari employs both inflectional and derivational morphemes just like English.

However, most of the processes found in Gbari appear to be unique in their range of

application order of appearance and distribution. It has shown for instance, that in English the
 18

plural morpheme –‘s’ is suffixed to the operand (at the end), while in Gbari the plural

morpheme ‘a’-, is prefixed at the beginning of a word. The result also revealed that the

morphological processes in Gbari also vary significantly in terms of productivity. Prefixation,

suffixation, compounding and reduplication for instance, appear to have the highest degree of

productivity. Followed by clipping, borrowing and coinage; and the least of them all is

replacive. However, the processes of ablaut, blending and acronym which exist in English are

not realized in Gbari. (2)

Tania Ionin and Keneth Wexler, Carried out a study on the first language (L1) Russian

Children acquiring English as a second language (L2). They investigated the reasons behind

the omission of verbal inflection in L2 acquisition and argued for presence of functional

categories in L2 grammar the analyses of spontaneous production data had shown that the

child L2 learner (n=20), while omitting inflection almost never produce incorrect

cause/agreement morphology. Furthermore, the L2 learners use suppletive inflection at a

significantly high rate than affixal inflection, and over generate be auxiliary forms in utterance

lacking progressive participles (e.g; they are help people). A grammaticality judgment task

of English tense/ agreement morphology similarly had shown that the child L2 English

learners are significantly more sensitive to the “ be” paradigm than to inflection on thematic

verbs.

The findings suggested that tense is present in the learners L2 grammar, and that it is

instantiated through forms of be auxiliary. It was argued that omission of inflection is due to

problems with the realization of surface morphology, rather than to feature impairment in

accordance with the missing surface inflection Hypothesis of Prevost and white (20) it was

furthermore suggested that L2 learners initially associate morphological agreement with verb-

raising and thus acquired forms of be before inflectional morphology on in situ thematic

verbs. (95)
 19

Xiaoli Bao undertook an empirical study on the mongolian learners’ morphological

errors in their English writing and tried to analyze why they make such errors. This was done

using contractive analysis Error analysis and Inter language premises. The result of the study

revealed that some of the mongolian students’ morphological errors are interlingua which are

caused by the interference from mongolian students and others are intralingua which are

caused by over-generalization, ignorance of the rule restrictions, incomplete application of

rules, and false concept hypothesis. The rest are caused by Mongolian students’ Second

language, Chinese. The result of the study also indicated that the characteristics of these errors

are simple, and primary. As for the interlingual error, teachers should be patient, because

students will little by little approach the target language with hard work. These errors may

eventually disappear. As for the intralingual errors, it happens because, Mongolian students

have had laid a solid foundation of English basic knowledge. Therefore, it is significant for

mongolian students to work hard. (62)

Aida Kurani, and Anita Muho Conducted a study on the morphological processes of

Albanian and English languages. The aim of the study was to point out the similarities and

differences of English and Albanian languages in the morphological level. They did this by

comparing different parts of speech of both languages. They had analyzed nouns, verbs,

adverbs, adjective structures, the use of articles, pronouns etc. They found out from the study

that, morphological similarities between the languages taken in consideration are significantly

greater than the differences. Grammatical categories of the Albanian language are very close

to those of the English language.

Nouns in the Albanian language show notable gender, case and number. Nouns in the

English language have the category of number (singular, Plural) as in Albanian, but, don’t

emphasize the grammatical category of gender.

 20

The result of the study equally indicated that, in English language, gender does not

manifest the characteristics of a grammatical category, but is generally regulated by the

semantics and meaning. The Albanian language has three genders of nouns: Feminine,

Masculine and neutral gender. English adjectives do not change as generally happens in

Albanian language they remain unchanged, in both the number and gender. The Albanian

language is a synthetic-analytical language, with a dominance of synthetic features and an

analytical trend, While English is an analytical-synthetic language. Being an analytical

language, English does not mark all words as the part of speech it belongs to, for example: the

words break outlaw, have their own forms of verbal of nominal or suffix-ly is the indicator

that defines the word as an adverb, but not all the adverbs end in the suffix-by and not all the

words ending with the suffix-ly are adverbs. For examples: the words washed straight, clear,

tomorrow, slow, fast crosswise are adverbs, while leisurely lovely, lively, womanly, princely

school-ly, silly, ugly are adjectives (28)

Acheoah J Emike Conducted a Study on the contrastive analysis of English and

Afenmai Morphology. The study examined the morphological processes in English and

Afenmai, a language of the Esako people of Edo State of Nigeria, a multilingual speech

community. He based his analyses on the Agenebode dialect of Afenmai. Having examined

the structure and word formation processes in Agenebode dialect of Afenmai and invariably in

human language. Minute elements know as morphemes abound in many Afenmai and English

words. However, these elements could be classified in binary opposition: free as opposed to

bound, root as opposed to affix, prefix as opposed to suffix. The morphemic components

could be combined in a variety of ways in the process of word formation both in English and

Afenmai. He had aligned with Chomsky (11) who had contended that languages have

universals.
 21

The study has investigated morphological processes in English and Afenmai through

a contrastive-analyst approach. Peculiarities in the morphological processes of the two

languages as well as their areas of differences and similarities, believed to be of pedagogical

relevance, have been elucidated. The study had observed that morphology is very relevant to

grammar: the rules of word formation in English and Afenmai and by extension, in other

languages of the word, help us to know word class (parts of speech) of different words. For

example, the word “manage” which is a verb becomes a noun when the suffix “-ment” is

affixed to it. similarly, Afenmai “mie” (see) which is a verb becomes an adjective when the

prefix “ono” (agentive) is affixed to it to form” onomie” (one who sees); also the rules of

word formation make it clear to us that there are cases of zero morpheme in the shifting of

words (word class shift from one part of speech to another). The result of the investigation had

shown the followings.

The word formation process known as derivation is common in Afenmai. However,

inflections are rare therein; thus, English is synthetic while Afenmai is analytic.

The study had established that the morphological processes common to English and

Afenmai are prefixing, compounding, derivation of one word-class from another and

reduplication. Reduplication is more salient in Afenmai, while suffixation (both inflectional

and derivational) is a more productive morphological process in English than in Afenmai; it is

rare in Afenmai. Also, unlike Afenmai, English pronouns show clear-cut functional

inflections. The two basic ways of forming words in English are derivation and

Compounding. Inflection which is a change in the form of a word to convey grammatical

concepts such as agentive, word-class shift, tense, number etc could be derived through

affixation internal change of word elements, reduplication and prosodic features such as tone

placement (29).
 22

Peter .K. Muriungi et al embarked on another study on the errors of English as

second language learners. The study focused on the nature and typology of errors that primary

school pupil in Nembure Division, Embu County, kenya make in the acquisition of English as

a second language. a written task in the form of a composition was administered to collect

data from 182 class seven pupils. Error analysis approach was adopted in the analysis of the

data collected. The following areas were examined to assess the errors of the L2 learners

- Regularization of Irregular plurals and irregular verbs

- Omission of plural ‘s’

- Omission/wrong use of proposition

- Miss ordering errors

- Wrong use of “me” as a subject

- Lack of gender agreement

- Errors regarding auxiliaries

- Lack of agreement (disconcord)

- attachment of the past marker to and infinitive

- Omission of verbs

- mother tongue influence,

- spelling errors and,

- use of wrong auxiliary

Errors found in the learners’ work were classified as being morphological,

phonological, and lexical and others fell into the general linguistic category. The fact that

learners make mistakes indicated that they have not mastered English language rules and

norms. The study has revealed that primary school pupils in Nembure Division have a serious

problem in the area of spelling and phonetics. This is due to the fact that many spelling errors
 23

were found in the data that was analyzed. This could also be explained by the fact that

learners lack adequate exposure to the spoken and written English language. (87)

Maria Moure Pena Ventured into Contrastive analysis Study on the word formation

processes of English and Spanish languages. The aim was to contrast mechanisms English and

Spanish have for coining words that prior did not belong to the language, to describe and

exemplify each of them and to determine the frequency and productivity they have in each

language. Data were sourced from specialized books in linguistics, dictionaries and

WebPages, documentaries and the researcher’s intuitive knowledge. The word formation

processes taken into consideration were: derivation compounding, clipping, borrowing, back

formation, acronyms, blending and Neologisms.

The outcome of the study has established that languages are constantly changing and

in order to expand, they have a series of word formation processes. In English and Spanish,

there have been corresponding coinage mechanisms, although, they vary in frequency and

productivity. These processes are derivation, compounding, clipping borrowing,

backformation, acronyms and blending. Derivation and borrowing are highly prolific

mechanisms in both languages; compounding is very much used in English, but, not so

common in Spanish; the rest are less prolific and more or less equally frequent in both

languages. The study concluded that Spanish is more reticent to neologisms, particularly those

who have entered the language from foreign words. English on the other hand on the overall

praises itself for being so receptive and having such a wide lexicon.

The particular status of English nowadays gives it much more freedom. As music,

Science Politics and other fields are predominantly monopolized by the English speaking

world other languages feel defensive for such a heavy load of terms that can be barely
 24

assimilated by the language, and so there is tendency for acquiring needless words and

expressions in detriment for the mother tongue. (398).

Jamal A. Salim Carried out a study on the noun morphology of the English and

Arabic languages. The aim of the study was to compare and contrast the noun, morphology of

both languages and to determine the points where they differ. These differences are the main

causes of difficulty in the learning of the second language. This is to direct teaching at those

points where there are structural differences, which in turn determines what the teacher has to

teach and what the learner has to learn. The study adopted contrastive analysis method in the

analysis of the data which are purely noun morphological processes of English and Arabic

languages. The end product of the study unveiled the following facts.

That both languages share some common features as well as several differences. In

the light of such findings, the linguistic problems of the Arabic speaker learning English may

be solved. In other words, through the comparison and contrast, the teacher will be aware of

the structures of the two languages and the areas of difficulties of the learners at the

morphological level. The study also aspired to benefit both the teachers and the textbook

writers of English and Arabic as foreign languages. (122)

Johanne Paradis had undertaken another study on the language characteristics of the

second language learners. The study was conducted to examine whether the expressive

language characteristics of typically developing (TD) children learning English as a second

language (ESL) have similarities to the characteristics of the English that is spoken by the

monolingual with specific language impairment (SLI), and whether this could result in the

erroneous assessment of TD English-language learners (ELLs) as language impaired.

Twenty-four TD language minority children who had been learning ESL for an

average of 9.5 months participated in the study. The children’s accuracy and error types in
 25

production of the following grammatical morphemes were examined in spontaneous and

elicited speech: third person singular [-s], past tense [-ed] irregular past tense, Be as copula

and auxiliary verb, Do as an auxiliary verb, progressive [-ing], prepositions ‘in’ and “on”,

plural [-s], and determiners “a” and “the”. The elicitation probes were part of a recently

developed standardized test for identifying language impairment, the Test of Early

Grammatical Impairment (TEGI; Martins Rice and Kenneth Wexler 200).

The result explained that the English language learners’ accuracy rates and error

patterns with the grammatical morphemes were similar to those that have been reported for

same-age monolingual children with SLI, in both spontaneous and elicited speech. In addition,

the Ell’s elicitation probe scores were compared to criterion scores and group means from the

sample of monolingual children used to develop the TEGI and their performance on the TEGI

was in the range of the clinical population even though, there is no reason to suspect that any

of these children is language impaired Both analyses point to the possibility that Typically

Developing English Language Learners could be mistaken as language impaired (172).

Silvina Montrul also conducted another study on the morphological errors in Spanish

Second language learners and heritage speakers. The study was done consequent upon the fact

that post puberty second language (L2) learners often omit or use the wrong affix for nominal

and verbal inflections in oral production, but less so in written tasks. The study used the

Missing surface hypothesis which states that, second language (L2) learners have in fact

functional projections, but errors stem from problems during production only (a mapping or

processing deficit). The study indicated that morphological variability is also characteristic of

heritage speakers (early bilingual of ethnic minority languages) who were exposed to the

family language naturalistically in early childhood but failed to acquire age-appropriate

linguistic competence in the language. However, because, errors in heritage speakers are more

frequent in written than in oral tasks, the missing surface inflection hypothesis does not apply
 26

to them. The discussion considers how morphological errors in the two populations seem to

be related to the type of experience.

The study sourced data from a large-scale research project conducted with 72 second

language learners (L2) of Spanish and 70 Spanish heritage Speakers. It investigates the overall

linguistic competence of L2 learners and heritage speakers in a variety of grammatical areas,

including phonology, lexical knowledge, gender agreement, object clitics and object marking,

Wh-movement, and tense-aspect and mood. The study concluded that the second language

learners of Spanish and Spanish heritage speakers differ from fully fluent native speakers in

the percentage rates of morphological errors with gender agreement, DOM and tense-aspect

and mood morphology in oral production and in untimed written tasks. Because, inflectional

morphology is (apparently) equally problematic in the two groups. The study enquired

whether the existing theories of morphological variability in second language acquisition

(SLA) can easily be extended to heritage language acquisition. It also declared that

morphological variability may be symptomatic of underlying syntactic deficits: Second

language learners make errors because; they lack the relevant abstract morph syntactic

knowledge at the level of linguistic representations. A specific prediction of this position

formulated by prevost and White is that second language learners should have the same

problems with inflectional morphology in oral production and untimed written tasks (163).

As a result of the above, this study can project that morphological problems are likely

to be found among the Hausa English learners in their written expressions due to variations in

word-formation processes in English and Hausa languages. This validates the current

Endeavour which is to examine the similarities and differences that exist in the morphological

processes of the two languages.

 27

Chapter Three

Theoretical Framework and Research Methodology

3.0 Introduction

The chapter dwells on the procedures and methods employed in collecting of data for the

research work. The discussion is principally done on the following sub-headings:

Theoretical framework,

Research design,

Data collection technique, and

Method of data analysis.

3.1 Theoretical Framework

3.1.1 Contrastive analysis theory

Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of pair of languages with a view to identifying

their structural differences and similarities. Contrastive Analysis was rooted in the practical

need to teach a second language in the most effective way possible. Its psychological base is

behaviorism and linguistic base is structuralism.

Contrastive analysis theory was first formulated by Fries in 1940’s and brought into

academic discourse by Robert Lado when he wrote his famous monograph Linguistics Across

cultures(190). In this book, he claimed that “those elements that are similar to his native

language will be simple for him and those elements that are different will be difficult.” This

conviction that linguistic differences could be used to predict learning difficulty produced the

notion of contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAM): “where two languages were similar, positive

transfer would occur, where they were different, negative transfer or interference would
 28

result” (Larsen-Freeman, 253). Lado also emphasizes the importance of comparison between

the second language and the native language in terms of teaching. He holds that” the teacher

who has made a contrast of the foreign language with the native language of the students will

know better what the real problems are and provide for teaching them.” (102) Contrastive

analysis theory also has a certain guiding significance to today’s English teaching in our

schools. It can help foreign language teachers to understand and predict what kinds of errors

students may make in their English learning so as to nip in the bud. According to Lado quoted

in Gast “Contrastive analysis is a scientific description of language to be learned carefully

compared with a parallel descriptive of the native language of the learner” (qtd in Volker Gast

2). The observation of Lado aptly highlighted the linguistic variants and discrepancies as well

as similiarities that are inherent in human languages across the globe. Though it was

propounded in (1957), for pedagogical reasons, the theory swayed in the 1960s and early

1970’s. According, to wikipedia 2012:

Contrastive analysis was exetensively used in the field of second Language

Aquisition(SLA) in the 1960s and early 1970s as a method of explaining why

some of the features of a target language were more didfficult to acquire than

others. According to the behaviourist theories prevailing at the time, language

learning was a question of habit of formation and this could be reinforced or

impeded by existing habits. Therefore, the difficulty in mastering certain

structures in a second language (L2) depends on the differences between the

learners’ (L1) and the language they are trying to learn. The views of scholars at

the time were what Lado claims: that those elements which are similar to (the

learner’s) native language will be simple for him, and those that are different

will be difficult.(NP)
 29

Several other scholars have their views as to what Constrastive analysis is all about too.

Johnson opines that contrastive analysis is “contrasting of series of statements about

similarities and differences between two languages”. He doubts the effectiveness of the

theory. He claims that the theory has been over estimated and is of the view that not all errors

committed by a language learner can be predicted (qtd in Sam Onuigbo &Joy Eyisi 76). He

points out that the differences identified in contrastive analysis may not cause the same degree

of difficulty, neither can such degree of difficulty be predicted. He suggests using contrastive

analysis to explain difficulties already found, rather than prediction of such problems or

difficulties. Johnson further adds that contrastive analysis should therefore be integrated with

error analysis, as this will better form an explanatory stage in error analysis. James in

Uzoigwe, Benita (73) and Jacek Fisiak in Rustipa (18) agree with the view by stating that

constrative analysis and error analysis are tools commonly used to solve certain problems

encountered in pedagogy. However, Dipietro and Corder cited in Uchegbuanam (11) agreed

with Lado to have done a critical work “having explanatory power” with a structural linguistic

orientation. The basic premise of Lado’s (263) Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis is that

language learning can be more successful when two languages (the native and the foreign) are

similar. Some linguists call this situation “positive transfer” in an overview of Lado’s

contrastive analysis hypothesis.

On the other hand, the theory stipulates that learning willl be quite difficult or even

unsuccessful when the two languages are different. Hence, second language teaching should

concentrate on the differences with little or no emphasis on similarities (Khansir Akbar 1028).

Fries in Lado claims that the problems of learning a second language do not arise as a result of

difficulties in the features of the new language itself, but because of the already existing habits

formed from the first language acquisition. Meisel Jurgen, in Onuigbo and Eyisi (76) makes

an interesting contribution to the concept of contrastive analysis. He states that modern

 30

contrastive analysis is concerned primarily with synchronic study of two languages- L1 and

L2. Within the synchronic study, he points out that the analyst engages in what he calls

“confrontive” Linguistics analysis and “contrastive analysis derived from the distinction

between “Confrontive Grammar, which shows the correspondence and similarities between

two languages. He also does a good job by tracing the componential nature and origin of

contrastive analysis that it emanates from contrastive grammar.

Lazarus Ogenyi (665) opines that a proper understanding of English grammar

(morphology and syntax) is difficult without a thorough knowledge of word-classes and the

rules governing their combination.

Chinyere Ngonebu (19) maintains that the nature of the English poses problems to the

learners of English as a second language, explaining that such problems emanate from the

inherent features of the phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics of English. She reveals

that those inconsistencies are sometimes confusing and complicated to a second language

learner.

L. C. Ogenyi (680) notes, “The very nature of English language makes it difficult for

second language learners to achieve the type of efficiency contained in Hodges and Whitten’s

words”. He further states that, English has peculiar inherent characteristics; and these

characteristics have adverse implication in the enterprise of teaching and learning the

language by second language teachers and learners respectively”.

The relevance of a theory or theories to scholarly research must always find a premium.

The relevance of Contrastive Analysis theory to this study is a synchronic study that focuses

on the current Hausa and the English morphological processes. As such, the theory of

contrastive Analysis (CA) is used in this study. The work employs Contrastive analysis theory

because it deals with word structures of two languages: English and Hausa. The theory is
 31

adopted on the account that no two languages are completely the same with the other. Uzozie

agrees with this view: that every human language has its own peculiarities in word-formation,

syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics (79). The theory will enhance the achievement

of the primary objective of this work, which is to compare the two different languages, Hausa

and English, with the aim of underscoring the similarities and differences of their

morphological processes for pedagogical purposes.

With regard to the above reasons, it is observed by the proponents and supporters of

contrastive analysis that for proper learning to take place, the second language teacher must be

conversant with the rules guiding the structures in the first language which are similar to the

second language and those that are different so as to detect where to encounter problems. If

this is not properly outlined, the learner is liable to commit errors in the target language,

because, he will transfer those habits from the L1 to the target language (TL). Allen John and

Corder Pit (14) state: “a learner of a foreign [second] language has already had well

developed articulatory movement and perpetual strategies before his exposure to a new

language. As such, he hears and produces words in the target language in terms of his native

phonological categories”. This means that for an English learner who has possessed the Hausa

language as L1 to learn English, his major impediments can be morphological processes,

hence Contrastive Analysis theory for this work.

3.2 Research methodology

3.2. 1 Research Design

According to Merrian-Webster Dictionary, design is a plan or protocol for carrying

out or accomplishing something (as a scientific experiment). It can be looked at as an outline

from which something may be made. Research design can be a plan or a blue print which

specifies how data relating to a given problem would be collected and analysed. It provides
 32

the procedure and/or outline for the conduct of any investigation. It is a detailed outline of

how an investigation will take place (Boniface Nworgu, (67). A research design will typically

include how data is to be collected, what instrument will be used and the intended means for

analysing data collected (Business Dictionary.com 2013).

This study makes use of descriptive research design since the study is aimed to

undertake a comparative study of morphological processes of two different languages, English

and Hausa. Descriptive research design is a type of research method that is used when one

wants to get information on the current status of a person or an object. It is used to describe

what is in existence in respect to conditions or variables that are found in a given situation. To

Onyekachi Eze, (29) descriptive research design studies are “mainly concerned with

descriptive events as they are without any manipulation of what is being observed. Any study

which seeks merely to find what is and describes it, is known as descriptive research” (69).

This research design is appropriate to the work because the research is basically to

probe the topic to generate ideas for it as a native speaker of Hausa and user of English as a

second language. The generated data will be effectively analysed without manipulation or

distortion. This will be in consonant with the definition of descriptive research as “the type

used to describe characteristics of a population or phenomenon being studied. It does not

answer questions about how/when/ why the characteristics occurred. Rather it addresses the

‘what’ question (what are the characteristics of the population or situation being studied?). (

Patricia Shields and Nandhini Rangaranjan 109-158).

3.3 Instruments for Data Collection

Sequel to the above exposition, data for this study were obtained from various sources

principally of secondary source such as textbooks, journals, articles in English and Hausa

languages as well as electronic media. The researcher has visited several libraries particularly
 33

Nnamdi Azikiwe Library of the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Department of Hausa

language, College of Education, Zing, Department of languages and linguistics Taraba State

University, Jalingo.

The researcher, being a native speaker of Hausa language and the user of English as a

second language made a great deal of his personal observation and analysis of the English and

Hausa Word-formation processes. Equally, through in-depth interview using unstructured

questions, the researcher had obtained data from renowned Hausa linguists at College of

Education Zing and Taraba State University, Jalingo where the Hausa language is studied at

N.C.E and Degree levels respectively.

3.4 Data Collection Technique

Within each general research approach one or some data collection techniques may be

used. Typically according to Lars Lyberg and Daniel Kisprzyk “ a researcher will decide for

one (or multiple) data collection techniques while considering its/their overall appropriateness

to the research, along with other practical factors such as : expected quality of the collected

data, estimated cost, predicted non-response rates, expected level of measure errors and length

of the possible data collection period” (Wikipedia, 2013), Kerlinger observes that” it is of

course possible that a given research question may not be satisfactorily studied because

specific data collection techniques do not exist to collect data needed to answer such a

question” (Wikipedia 2013). The most popular data collection technique include: surveys,

secondary data sources or archival data, objective measures or test and interviews.

3.5 Method of Data Analysis

The main aim of the study basically is to do a comparative analysis of English and

Hausa morphological processes. As the research design is descriptive, the comparative

 34

analysis method to be employed for data analysis is descriptive in nature.”In the descriptive

method, the data collected are organised in such a way that it describes the nature and type of

data collected. This can be done by using tables” (Thomas Lindlof & Bryan Taylor 2010).

This will be helpful in making better decisions. It will also be easier to identify the differences

and similarities in the English and Hausa word-formation processes compared using tables.
 35

Chapter Four

Data Analysis

4.0 Introduction

In this chapter we present and analyze the data collected for the purpose of this study.

An attempt is therefore, made to compare the principal morphological processes of the

languages, bringing out their inherent similarities and differences. It is assumed that

establishing the differences and similarities will aid in the examination of the linguistic

relationships that exist between the two languages under study. By so doing, we will

determine the degree at which English interferes with Hausa at the morphological level.

Rather than adopt the pedagogic or prescriptive approach in our analysis, the

researcher has adopted the descriptive with the help of Nida model in line with the views of

Oyetunde when he asserts that:

Teaching needs to be based on the best possible description of the language

being taught. And the better, the fuller, the more accurate description is the more

the chance the teacher will have to assist the learner in his growing mastery of

the structure of the new language. Without such knowledge, there will be little

possibility of satisfactory sequencing of materials, no chance of distinguishing

mistakes from systematic errors which are the best evidence that language

learning is taking place (27).

Thus, the analysis carried out in this chapter is predicted on the following:

1- Acronyms

2 -Affixation

3 - Alternation

4 – Backformation
 36

5 – Blending

6 – Borrowing

7 – Clipping

8 – Coinage

9 – Compounding

10 - Reduplication

Therefore, a sample of the comparative analysis is given, taken each process one after

the other.

4.1 The Comparative Analysis of the Processes in English and Hausa

4.1.1 Acronyms

English exhibits this feature as one of its word – formation processes, thus a lot of its

words are formed through acronyms. These are pronounced either alphabetically or as words

(retaining or losing their capital letters) as can be seen below:

4.1.1.1 The Division of Acronyms

(a) Those pronounced alphabetically which are called ‘alphabetisms’, e.g. CD

(‘Computer Disk’), VCR (‘Video Cassette Recorder’), NFL (‘National Football League) etc.

(b) Those pronounced as single words (with capital letters) e.g. NATO (North Atlantic

Treaty Organization), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency),

UNESCO (United Nation Educational, Science and Cultural Organization),

UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), AIDS (Acquire

Immune Deficiency Syndrome), etc.

(c) Those pronounced as single words but lost their capitals e.g. laser (light

amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), radar (radio detecting and ranging), scuba

(self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), zip (zone improvement plan), etc.

 37

It is observed that this is the only group of acronyms that is written without capital

letters, the rest appear in capitals.

(d) Those formed as names of organizations, e.g. MADD (mothers against drunk

driving), WAR (woman against rape), etc.

(e) Those, recently, used in banking sector, e.g. ATM (Automated Teller Machine), PIN

(Personal Identification Number), etc.

It should be noticed that Hausa lacks it; thus, it does not form any word through

acronyms.

4.1.2 Affixation

Abubakar Abdulhamid considers affixation as ‘a morphological process which

involves attaching a formative to an existing word: complex words which can be neatly

segmented into roots and affixes are realized by means of affixation’ (1). In English, there are

several categories of affixes depending on their position with reference to the stem or simply

according to their physical position relative to roots. It has been observed, therefore, that

English exhibit categories of affixes which are far more than that of Hausa. English uses

affixes like prefixes, suffixes or postfixes, infixes, circumfixes, interfixes, duplifixes,

transfixes, simulfixes, suprafixes and difixes; while Hausa uses only prefixes suffixes and

infixes. Perhaps this may be the reason that made Quirk et al point out ‘affixation’ as one of

the chief processes of English word-formation (78). Let us look at some examples of the

common affixes in the two languages:

 38

Affixes Example Schemes Description

Prefix English–disagree Prefix –stem Appears at the front of a

stem
Hausa – bahaushe
(Hausa man)

Suffix/postfix English –beautify Stem-suffix Appears at the back of a

stem
Hausa–gafarta
(forgiveness)

Infix English–abso-bloomin-lutely St (infix)em Appears within a stem

Hausa-guragu(cripples)

Circumfix English –uncountable Circumfix-Stem- One portion appears at the

front of a stem and the
circumfix other at the rear.

4.1.2.1 The Positional Categories of Affixes

Affixes are divided into several categories, depending on their position with reference

to the stem, as Elson Benjamin and Pickett Velma who observe that “several kinds of affixes

can be recognized depending on the way they occur with roots” (12). Based on that, Robins

(10), Matthews (97) and Crystal (80) agreed that in English affixes are divided into prefixes,

suffixes and infixes. In another development Elson and Pickett (12) classify affix morphemes

based on their physical position relative to roots as prefixes, suffixes, infixes, suprafixes and

simulfixes.

According to Elson and Pickett, prefixes occur before roots; suffixes occur after roots,

infixes occur inside the roots themselves (that is inside the words). They go further to explain

that “in some languages, morphemes are composed of (or include) suprasegmental phonemes

such as tone or stress. Frequently, segmental phonemes (vowels and consonants) and

suprasegmental phonemes combine to form morphemes, but in some cases the suprasegmental

phonemes alone indicate the meaning. Such morphemes may be called “suprafixes”. Suprafix
 39

morphemes are usually described in statement form, but also may be symbolized by using a

neutral symbol for the segmental phonemes with which they occur. In contrast to prefixes,

suffixes and infixes which are pronounced before, after, or in the middle of the root,

suprafixes are pronounced simultaneously with the root.

In addition to that, another kind of simultaneous affix has been called a simulfix. This

term, for Elson and Pickett, could be applied to any simultaneous morphemic features other

than those considered to be composed of suprasegmental phonemes (that is, pitch, stress,

length). Wallis (1956) uses this term in describing the aspect system of Mezquital Otimi,

which includes a simultaneous addition of certain phonemic features to the initial consonant

of the stem. The addition may be a single phoneme, sometimes pronounced before the initial

consonant, sometimes after it; or it may be less than a phoneme (e.g., voicing), and

pronounced simultaneously with the initial root consonant as one phonetic segment. For

example, completive aspect is signaled by a feature of palatization simulfixed to roots

beginning with /? / or /h/, and by a component of voicing simulfixed to roots beginning with a

voiceless consonant and other than /? / or /h/.

According to The free encyclopedia (2008), prefix and suffix are extremely common

terms. Infix and circumfix are less so, as they are not important in European languages. The

other terms are uncommon, as listed below:

Affixes Examples Schema Description

Prefix Undo Prefix-stem Appears at the front
of a stem
Suffix/post Looking Stem-suffix Appears to the back of
fix a stem
Infix Saxomaphone St(infix)em Appears within a stem
Circumfix Scattered Circumfix>stem One portion
<Circumfix appears at the front
of a stem, and the
other at the rear
Interfix Speedo meter Stema–interfixstemb Links two stems
together in a
compound
Duplifix Teeny-weeny Stem-duplifix Incorporates a
 40

reduplicated
portion of a stem
(may occur in
front, at the rear, or
within the stem)
Tran Maltese: ‘kiteb’ S<transfix>te<transfix>m A discontinuous affix
sfix (he wrote) compare That interleaves within
root ktb (write) a discontinuous stem
Simulfix Mouse –mice Changes a segment of
a stem
Suprafix Produce (noun) A stem
Produce (verb)
Disfix ;Alabama:“tipli” The elision of a
(breakup) portion of a stem
Compareroot
“tipasl;” stm (break)
The free encyclopedia (2008)

Furthermore, prefix and suffix may be combined as “adfix”, a term that is rarely used

except in contrast with infix. In transcription, for example, in the third column in the chart

above, simple affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are shown connected to the stem with

hyphens. Affixes which disrupt the stem, or which themselves are discontinuous, are often

marked off with angle brackets. Reduplication is often shown with a tilde.

At this juncture, let us have a comparative analysis of affixation in the two languages:

(1) Prefixation

Both English and Hausa exhibit this feature in their morphological process. In the two

languages, prefixes are used for derivational and inflectional purposes, for example:

English – pre (prefix) + school (stem) = preschool

Post (prefix) + war (stem) = postwar

Inter (prefix) + national (stem) = international

Hausa – ba (prefix) + kauyee (village) = bakauyee (villager)

ma (prefix) + kiira (blacksmithing) = makeerii (blacksmith)

mai (prefix) + barnaa (destroying) = maibarnaa (destroyer)

 41

It can be seen from the examples that English uses many prefixes which Quick et al

(442) describe as:

(i) Reversative prefixes these reverse the action or the meaning of the stems to which

they are attached. English, therefore, uses four prefixes such as:

un, non, dis and iI, to reverse the action to their attachments, such as:

un + believable = unbelievable

non + standard = nonstandard

dis + respect = disrespect

il + legitimate = illegitimate

Hausa which is used to indicate negation exhibits only one that shows this linguistic

phenomenon – marar; as it appears in such words as:

marar + kookarii (intelligent) = marar – kookarii (dull)

marar + goodiya (grateful) = marar – goodiyaa (ungrateful person)

(ii) Pejorative prefixes express contempt. In English, there are two prefixes of this kind –

mis and mal as in:

mis + calculate = miscalculate

mis + adventure = misadventure

mal + administration = maladministration

mal + nutrition = malnutrition

In Hausa, one could not find pejorative prefixes.

(iii) Prefixes of degree or size – This kind of prefixes, in English, shares grade or size or

extent of something such as super, under and out as in:

super + structure = superstructure

super + impose = superimpose

under + weight = underweight

 42

under + state = understate

out + building = outbuilding

out + class = outclass

This group of prefixes is not found in Hausa.

(iv) Prefixes of attitude – These indicate the behaviour of something or somebody towards

another, such as anti, counter and co as in:

anti + climax= anticlimax

anti + personnel = anti-personnel

counter + balance = counterbalance

counter + blast + counterblast

co + produced = co-produced

co + exist = coexist

Prefixes of attitude do not exist in Hausa, too.

(v) Locative prefixes – English uses this kind of prefixes but Hausa

does not use them. Locative prefixes indicate the actual setting, or

position, or mixture of something, such as trans and inter as in:

trans + form = transform

trans + figure = transfigure

inter + link = interlink

inter + connect = interconnect

(vi) Prefixes of time and order are such prefixes that could be found in

English, but not in Hausa. They are used to indicate time, suchprefixes include, pre,

port, and re as in:

pre + caution = precaution

pre + date = predate

 43

post + impressionist = post-impressionist

post + date = postdate

re + decoration = redecoration

re + entered = re-entered

(vii) Number prefixes are used in English to indicate quantity such as di,

bi, mono, uni and tri as in:

di + syllabic = disyllabic

di + plane = biplane

bi + annual = biannual

mono + plane = monoplane

mono + rail = monorail

uni + corn = unicorn

uni + lateral = unilateral

tri + lingual = trilingual

tri + colour = tricolour

These prefixes, also, are not found in Hausa.

(viii) Conversion prefixes are those prefixes that English uses to create some words that

indicate state of conversion, but Hausa lacks such prefixes; for example be and en as

in:

be + little = belittle

be + friend = befriend

en + danger = endanger

en + case = encase

Hausa, on the other hand, exhibits only four prefixes: ba, ma, mai and maras.

The ba prefix, in Hausa, has the idea of “man of” as in:

 44

ba + Turai (Europe) = batuuree (European)

ba + kudu (south) = bakudee (southerner)

Another Hausa prefix is ma which has the idea of “doer of” as in:

ma + rubuutu (writing) + marubuucii (writer)

ma + gini (building) maginiii (builder)

The prefixes ma, in Hausa, also indicates the idea of ‘places’ as in:

ma + rini (dying) = marinaa (place for dying)

ma + auna (weigh) = ma’aunaa (place for selling grain)

Furthermore, ma prefix indicates the idea of ‘instrument’ as in:

ma + buudi (open) = mabuudii (key)

ma + kulli (lock) = makulli (locker)

Another prefix that Hausa uses to create words is mai which indicates “owner

of”, literarily; as in:

mai + tsafta (cleaniness) = mai – tsafta ( tidy man/woman)

mai + tafiyaa (traveling) = mai – tafiyaa (traveler)

The last Hausa prefix is maras which is a contraction of mai-rasa (loser of),

which becomes marar (lacking) as in:

marar + waayoo (wisdom) = marar – waayoo (foolish)

marar + hankalii (sense) = marar – hankalii (rude person)

(2) Suffixation

Suffixational morphemes exist in the morphology of the two languages. In English,

suffixation is considered as the commonest process that is involved in most lexical derivations

and in most inflectional formations. A derivational suffix, therefore, changes the syntactic

category of one word into another; for instance, in English, an adjective changes to noun

(happy - happiness), an adjective changes to verb (modern – modernize), a noun changes to

 45

adjective (nation – national), a noun changes to verb (beauty – beautify), a verb changes to

adjective (pay – payable) or a verb changes to nominal (forming nouns from verbs), or

adjectival (forming adjectives from nouns, verbs and other adjectives) and adverbial (forming

adverbs from adjectives). Let us look at some examples:

(i) Verbs to nouns: bombard + ment = bombardment

(ii) Adjective to nouns: blind + ness = blindness

(iii) Verbs to noun: signify + ant = significant

deter + ent = deterent

confess + or = confessor

compose + er = composer

(iv) Adjectives to verbs: conceptual + ize = conceptualize

black + en = blacken

Note – it should be noted that en could also be used with nouns to form

adjectives which indicates the idea of ‘made of’ as in:

gold + en = golden verbal suffixes

wood + en = wooden

(iii) Nouns to verb: code + ify = codify, solid + ify + solidify

(iv) Noun to adjectives: dust + – y = dusty, ice + – y = icy

Note that – y could also be used with verbs to form adjectives (which indicates the

idea of “tending to”) or nouns (which indicates the idea of “the action or process of”) as in:

run + – y = runny
Adjectives
stick + – y = sticky

inquire + – y = inquiry
Nouns
expire + – y = expiry
 46

It should also be noted that – y (also – ie) appears with noun indicating small size or

as a form of a name, indicating affection as in: piggy, doggie, daddy, Suzie, etc

(v) Nouns or verbs to form adjectives

plenty + – ful = plentiful

beauty + – ful = beautiful

master + – ful = masterful

forget + – ful = forgetful

care + – ful = careful

(vi) Nouns to form adjectives:

tree + less = treeless

meaning + less = meaningless

hope + less = hopeless

(vii) Verbs to form adjectives:

pay + – able = payable

perish + – able = perishable

reverse + – ible = reversible

Note that ‘– able’ could be used with nouns to form adjectives (having or showing the

quality of) as in: fashion + able = fashionable

(viii) Adjectives to adverbs:

stupid + – ly = stupidly

accurate + – ly = accurately

Note that – ly could also be used with nouns to form adjectives (which indicate ‘having

the quality of’) as in:

coward + – ly = cowardly

scholar + – ly = scholarly
 47

(ix) Nouns to adjectives and adverbs:

quarter + – ly = quarterly (adjective)

quick + – ly = quickly (adverb)

Suffixation in Hausa, on the other hand, occurs with the help of what Rufa’i calls

‘derivational suffixes’ to form some Hausa words (6). The Hausa derivative suffixes,

therefore, include: – ta, –nta, – taka, – ntaka, – ci, – nci, – wa, – au, – ayya and – eriya. These

suffixes are generally identified in deriving abstract ideas (or abstract nouns) or verbs as in the

following table:

Base Class Meaning Derived Word Class MEANING

(i) - ta gzajeeree Adj short Gajartaa n(abst) Shortness

baawaa n slave bawtaa n(abst) slavery

kuturuu n leper kuturtaa n(abst) leprosy

(ii) –nta Saaboo Adj new Saabuntaa n(abst) newness

baakoo n guest baakuntaa n(abst) being guest

muuguu adj wicked muguntaa n(abst) wickedness

(iii) - Kadai Adj alone Kadaitakaa n(abs) Loneliness

taka
jaarimii n brave jaarintakaa n(abst) bravery
man
samaari n samartakaa n(abst) youth hood
youth

(iv) – gwauroo N unmarried gwaurantakaa n(abst) being unmarried

ntaka
bara n servant barantakaa n(abst) being servant

abookii n friend abookantakaa n(abst) friendship

 48

(v) –ci Aadalii N just man aadalcii n(abst) Justice

albarkaa n blessing albarkacii n(abst) sake

kusa adj near kusaaci n(abst) nearness

(vi) -nci Jaamus N Germany Jaamusancil n(abst) German

faransi n France Albarkacii n(abst) French

tuurai n Europe kusaaci n(abst) English

(vii) – Aikata V work aikatayyaa n(abst) mutual work

So v love soyayyaa n(abst) mutual love

Saaka v revenge saakayyaa n(abst) vengeance

(viii) - yard V agree yarjeejeeniya n(abst) mutual

eni a agreement
ya v push tureereeniya n(abst)
tuura pushing one
v slap mareereeniya n(abst) another
maar
i slapping one
another

(ix) –wa faara V begin faarawaa n(abst) beginning

gama v finish gamawaa n(abst) finishing

jika v to wet jikawaa n(abst) soaking/wetting

(x) –au Mant V forget Mantau n(abst) very forgetful

a
v be late makarau n(abst) be very late
Mak
ara v playfulness gaagarau n(abst) very playful

Gaag
araa

Rufa’i (19)

Derivational Suffixes

A derivational suffix is that morpheme that changes the class of a word to which it is

added: for example, “ly” changes the word ‘slow’ to ‘slowly’, and the word class changes

from adjective to adverb. According to the free encyclopedia (2008), in linguistics derivation
 49

is used to form new words, as with ‘happi-ness’ and ‘un-happy’ from ‘happy’, or

‘determination’ from ‘determine’. A derivational suffix usually applies to words of one

syntactic category and changes them into words of another syntactic category.

Some examples of English derivational suffixes:

(a) Adjective – to – noun: ness (slow - slowness).

(b) Adjective – to – verb: ize (modern - modernize)

(c) Noun – to - adjective: al (recreation - recreational).

(d) Noun – to – verb: fy (glory - glorify)

(e) Verb – to – adjective: able (drink - drinkable).

(f) Verb – to – noun: ance (deliver - deliverance).

According to Agezi (98), derivational suffixes are used to derive a form class from

another. For instance, the noun (derivational) suffixes include:

- ment as in govern - government

establish - establishment

- er as in teach - teacher

dance - dancer

- al as in refuse - refusal

revive - revival

A derivational suffix can change a word from indicating a state of being into a process,

for example: (a) She is good to everyone.

(b) The goodness of the situation excites everyone.

Furthermore, with the adverbial suffix (-ly), there is a change from state to manner

plus the deletion of some words. For example:

(a) She is slow in her work.

(b) She works slowly.

 50

The verb “is”, the preposition “in” and the possessive “her” in sentence (a) are deleted.

The free encyclopedia (2008) gives a sample of derivational suffixes in the following
table:
Suffix Class(es) of word to Nature of change in Examples
which suffix applies meaning

Suffix Adjective Changes Electric/electricity

to noun obese/obesity
‘-ity’

Suffix Noun Changes Fame/famous

to adjective
‘-ous’ Glamour/glamorous

Suffix Verb Changes to adjective Print/printable

means ‘can undergo
‘-able’ action of verb’ Drink/drinkable

The free encyclopedia (2008)

Derivational suffixes could also be grouped according to the words they

form, as Agezi (44) observes. These include:

(1) Nominal Suffixes

This group of suffixes is used to form nouns from verbs and adjectives, e.g.:

Suffixes Added to Verbs Derived Words

(a) – ment amaze amazement

establish establishment

develop development

Added to Adjectives

(b) – ness happy happiness

careless carelessness
lazy laziness

Added to Verbs

(c) – ant inhabit inhabitant

disinfect disinfectant
(d) – or act actor
dictate dictator
conduct conductor
 51

(e) – er drive driver

teach teacher
play player

(2) Verbal Suffixes

These are suffixes used in forming verbs from mostly adjectives and nouns.

Examples:

Suffixes Added to Adjectives Derived Words

(a) – ize popular popularize

natural naturalize
civil civilize

(b) – en deaf deafen

weak weaken
soft soften

Added to Nouns

(c) – ify person personify

glory glorify
beauty beautify

(3) Adjectival Suffixes

These are suffixes used in forming adjectives from nouns, verbs and other adjectives, as

the case may be. Examples:

Suffixes Added to Nouns Derived Forms

(a) – y hair hairy
dream dreamy
gum gummy
(b) – ful faith faithful
help helpful
care careful
(c) – less mother motherless
mercy merciless
child childless

Added to Verbs
(d) – able read readable
teach teachable
count countable
force forcible
eat eatable
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It should be noted that “able” is one of the exceptional morphemes that can stand

both as a bound morpheme (as seen in the given examples) or a free one, which can stand

alone without being attached to any root or base, as shown in the sentences below:

- She should be able to read simple sentences in Arabic.

- They seemed able to work together efficiently.

- You will be able to relax for some hours.

(4) Adverbial Suffixes

Some adverbs are formed from adjectives with the suffix below:

Added to Adjectives
- ly slow slowly
deliberate deliberately
decisive decisively

To sum up this unit, it is found that derivational suffixes change the grammatical class

of the morphemes to which they are attached. Furthermore, in many cases, derivational affixes

change both the syntactic category and the meaning: modern - modernize (“to make

modern”). Thus, the modification of meaning is sometimes predictable: Adjective + ness the

state of being (Adjective)

e.g. stupid - stupidness.

Inflectional Suffixes

An inflectional suffix performs a grammatical function in a word without changing

the word class of that particular word, as Agezi observes: “Inflectional suffixes perform a

grammatical function without changing the word class of the morphemes they are attached to”

(47). In English, inflectional suffixes come at the end of a morpheme and no other affix can

come behind them.

According to Agezi, English has eight inflectional suffixes, which are:

(1) The plural suffix “-s” as in cats, dogs.

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(2) The possessive suffix “s” as in hers, yours.

(3) The present (inflectional) suffix “-s” as in works, kicks.

(4) The past (inflectional) suffix “- ed” as in killed, slapped.

(5) The participle (inflectional) suffix “-en/-ed” as in eaten, chosen.

(6) The – ing (progressive) inflectional suffix as in teaching, cooking.

(7) The comparative (inflectional) suffix “-er” as in finer, taller.

(8) The superlative (inflectional) suffix “-est.” as in finest, tallest.(48)

According to Rubba Johanna, English has only three categories of meaning, which

are expressed inflectionally, known as inflectional categories. They are numbers in nouns,

tense/ aspect in verbs, and comparison in adjectives.

Number

The English nouns could be either in singular or plural form. The plural suffix “- s”,

which is phonetically realized as /s/, /z/ and /iz/ (as in ‘cats’ and ‘rats’ /kǽts/, /rǽts/; ‘bags’

and ‘dogs’ /bǽgz/, /dogz/; ‘churches’ and ‘houses’ /ts3:tsiz/, /hauziz/, respectively), is

syntactically important in relation to number. Number is associated with the English nouns:

therefore, a noun phrase must agree with the verb it precedes in any construction. Examples

are drawn below:

(a) The cats are licking the milk.

(b) *The cats is licking the milk.

(c) The men are working on the farm.

(d) *The men is working on the farm.

Sentences (b) and (d) violate the rule that a singular NP or a singular subject takes a

singular verb, while a plural NP or a plural subject takes a plural verb (concord agreement).

Subject could be a noun, pronoun or their equivalent. Morphologically, the pronouns of

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English can be divided into three groups, which are personal, relative and demonstrative

pronouns. The personal and demonstrative pronouns are inflected for number. Examples:

Singular Plural

I We
You You Personal
He/She/It They

This These
Demonstrative

That Those

Based on the above examples, it is only the second person, personal pronoun “you” that

shows no change in the plural form. However, it has a plural in the reflexive (yourself –

yourselves).

Pronouns are also inflected in relation to case, that is, there are nominative, objective

and genitive cases. Examples:

Nominative Genitive Objective

I Mine Me

He His Him
She Her(s) Her
Who Whose Whom
You Your(s) Your
As can be seen above, the first person singular “I” and the third person singular

“she” have irregular possessive formation.

Tense/Aspect

Tense inflection in English affects the verb category. English verbs demonstrate

inflection in the following ways:

i. The infinitive “to” as in ‘to walk’, ‘to teach’.

ii. The (- s) agreement morpheme or 3rd person singular form as in ‘walks’, ‘teaches’, etc.

iii. The (- ed) form (past tense) as in ‘walked’, ‘washed’

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iv. The (-en) form (past participle) as in “written”, “driven”.

The (-ing) form (progressive or gerundive) as in” writing”, “driving”.

The various verb forms are exemplified below:

Infinitive 3rd person Progressive/gerundive Past Tense Past participle

form
singular form

To Teaches Teaching Taught Taught

teach

To Sinks Sinking Sank Sunk

sink

To sing Sings Singing Sang Sung

To forget Forgets Forgetting Forgot Forgotten

To dance Dances Dancing Danced Danced

To praise Praises Praising Praised Praised

To kill Kills Killing Killed Killed

To talk Talks Talking Talked Talked

To go Goes Going Went gone

To Has Having had Had

have

The free encyclopedia (2008).

The infinitive is the base form of a word and is regular, while verb inflection is not

regular in all cases. While the 3rd person singular and the progressive/gerundive remain

unchanged, the past participle shows variations in its inflectional forms from verb to verb,

although its regular forms are (-ed) and (-en), respectively. English verbs can be roughly

grouped into two categories: regular and irregular verbs. Concord is also another important
 56

feature in the English verb system. There is the third person singular (inflectional) morpheme

‘-s’, which must always be suffixed to verbs in the present tense form. It demonstrates a

peculiar case in concord.

Examples: - John appears neat always.

- Patience cooks deliciously.

It is also germane to say that the tense used in a sentence should agree with the time

of the action, and this agreement is morphologically indicated in the main verb of the

sentence. Here, the present and past perfect forms demonstrate special features while relating

action to time. In English, the morphemes of the present and past perfect are ‘have + en’ and

‘had + en’, respectively. The perfect, whether present or past takes the form have (had) + past

participle of the main verb. The (-en) is suffixed to the main verb of the sentence to form the

past participle of the verb. Examples:

Present perfect form

Main verb singular plural

Go I have gone We have gone

You have gone You have gone

He/she has gone They have gone

Past Perfect Form

Main verb Singular Plural

Go I had gone We had gone

You had gone You had gone

He/She/ It had gone They had gone

In the progressive (present or past), the progressive morpheme (-ing) is suffixed to the

main verb of the sentence. Examples:

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Present Progressive

Singular Plural

1st person I am going We are going

2nd person You are going You are going

3rd person He/She/ It is going They are going

Past -Progressive

Singular Plural

1st person I was going We were going

2nd person You were going You were going

3rd person He/She/It was going They were going

Comparison

The comparative and superlative inflectional suffixes /-er/ and /-est/ operate in the

adjectival and adverbial categories. The /-er/ and /-est/ show the importance of morphemes

and generally inflections in syntax. /-er/ morpheme in adjectives is used when two things are

compared, while the /-est/ morpheme is used when more than two things are compared. For

example: big bigger biggest as in:

Sule has a big kettle

Bala’s kettle is bigger than Sule’s.

Musa’s kettle is the biggest of all.

/-er/ and /-est/ are used to show degree in adjectives. Longer adjectives, however, are not

inflected, rather lexical items ‘more’ and ‘most’ are added to the base. For example:

Positive Comparative Superlative

Beautiful more beautiful most beautiful

Handsome more handsome most handsome

Wicked more wicked most wicked

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The process of suppletion also occurs with the English adjectives, for example: bad

worse worst

Morphologically, English adverbs are at times inflected with the morphemes (-er)

and (-est) for degree just like the adjectives. For example:

Positive Comparative Superlative

Soon sooner soonest

Often oftener oftenest

Concerning the inflectional categories of English affixes, Rubba (204) divides them

into two and summarizes them in a tabular form: Regular and irregular, thus:

Inflectional Categories and Affixes of English

1. The Regular Affixes

Word class to which Inflectional category Regular affix used to express category
inflection applies

Nouns Number -s, -es; book/books, bush/bushes

Possessive -s, -‘: the cat’s tail, Charles’toe

Verbs 3RD Person singular -s, -es: it rains, Hafsah writes, the water
present slashes

Past tense -ed: paint/painted

Perfect aspect -ed: paint/painted (has painted) (past

participle)

Progressive aspect -ing: fall/falling, write/writing (present

participle)

Adjectives Comparative -er. Fall/taller

(comparing two items)
Fine/finer

Superlative (comparing
+ 2 items)
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2. The Irregular Affixes

Here are some ways English inflectional morphology is irregular:

Type of irregularity Noun plurals Verbs: past tense Verbs: past

participle
Unusual Oxen, syllabi Taken, seen, fallen,
suffix Antennae eaten

Change of stem Foot/feet Mouse/mice Run/ran, come/came, Swim/swum

vowel flee/fled, meet/met,
Sing/sung
fly/flew, stick/stuck,
get/got, break/broke

Change of stem Brother/brethren Feel/felt, kneel/knelt Write/written,

vowel with unusual
do/done,
suffix
break/broken,

fly/flown

Change in base form Send/sent, bend/bent, Send/sent

(sometimes with think/thought
Bend/bent
unusual suffix) teach/taught, buy/
bought think/thought
buy/bought

Zero-marking (no Deer, sheep, fish Hit, beat

suffix, no stem
change)

More ways in which inflection can be irregular:

Sometimes, instead of a suffix to change, the whole word changes – this could be a verb

to be (be – am – are – is – was, - were, been); a main verb (go –went – gone); adjective (good

– better best), etc. This process is termed “suppletion”, a form of modification or alternation,
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as observes in The Free Encyclopedia (2008) – which will be discussed fully in the next

process of word-formation.

Infixation

This process, as Crystal observes, is not commonly found in European languages,

English inclusive, but it is commonly found in Asian, American, Indian and African

languages, Hausa inclusive (80). Fromkin Victoria and Rodman Robert note that English has

a very limited set of infixes, normally found in adjectives and adverbs (72). The common infix

used in America is the word ‘fuckin’ and all its euphemisms (e.g., friggin, freakin, fuggin);

while in Britain, a common infix is ‘bloody’ and its euphemisms too (e.g., bloomin).

However, in Hausa, infixation occurs in form of pluralization as in: kurame (deaf people) –

kurma (root) + -a (infix).

It should be noted that whereas the availability of prefixes and suffixes in the Hausa

language is not in doubt, that of infixes is believed to have resulted from an erroneous

perspective. Thus, there is a great controversy on the existence of infixes in Hausa. For

instance, Al-Hassan Bello says:

The so-called infixes in Hausa are, in truth, either transfixes or a relay of suffixes

that became obscured by phonology or deletion envisaged parallactically as

infixation. In two other instances, infixation either arose as a simple case of

unscrupulous use of terminology or was established on a seemingly desperate

premise, namely the non-occurrence of a tonal phenomenon. (6)

According to him, most of the instances that seem to be infixation are not really infixation, but

probably a process called “transfixation”. Furthermore, Al-Hassan states that samples of the

best enterprise in Hausa grammar discuss infixation with intersecting examples (6). For

instance the -aa- infixation is found in such cases as ‘kurtu’(recruit) > ‘kuraataa’ (recruits),and

‘kwalba’(bottle) > ’kwalaabee’(bottles). Those with –ee- infixation include ‘garmaa’(plough)

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> ‘gareemanii’ (ploughs), and ‘salka’(skin bottle) >’saleekanii’ (skin bottles). There is –oo

infixation in ‘dabba’ (animal) > ’dabbobii’ (animals) and ‘mootaa’ (automobile) >’mootoocii’

(automobiles). Most of these and numerous other examples can be seen in Abubakar (4),

Al-Hassan (7) explains the formation of certain plurals in Hausa as the result of the

interaction of a tri-radical root and a composite affix. A word like ‘jirgi’ (boat’) forms its

plural by allowing the interlacing of the composite affix aa……..ee with the tri-radical root

jirg- where the first part of the composite affix (i.e., aa) enters the root before the third

consonant while the second part of the composite affix (i.e., ee) enters after the third

consonant to give rise to ‘jiraagee’(boats), the plural form. However, a word like

‘damoo’(monitor lizard) with its bi-radical root (like the above examples) dam- requires a

third consonant, which the language supplies by reduplicating the last consonant of the root

(i.e. /m/) to give rise to the required form damm-,thus fulfilling the condition of tri-radicality.

The interaction of the resultant root damm with the compound affix aa……ee now follows to

give rise to the plural damaamee (monitor lizards). This kind of morphology where a

discontinuous affix combines with a discontinuous root is known as transfixation.

Specifically, that affix is a transfix and not an infix. Transfixes lack the homogeneity and the

completely intra-root location of infixes, as seen in the examples above.

Therefore, the claims for the existence of infixation in Hausa, though justified, have

failed to stand the taste of time.

Circumfixation

English exhibits this linguistic feature while forming some words; Hausa, on the other

hand, lacks it. For instance, in English words like: understatement –under (prefix) + state

(root) + ment (suffix); transformation – trans (prefix) + form (root) + ation (suffix);

disappointment – dis (prefix) + appoint (root) + ment (suffix are formed via circumfixation.
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Furthermore, in English circumfixation could be noticed in several words such as:

unfriendly, ascattered, dislikeness, illegally, transplantation, monolingualism, bilingualism,

multilingualism, disestablishment, uncountable, etc which could be divided into parts thus:

Prefixes root words suffixes words realized

un – friend -ly unfriendly

a– scatter -ed ascattered

dis – like -ness dislikeness

il – legal -ly illegally

trans – plant - ation transplantation

mono – lingual -ism monolingualism

bi – lingual -ism bilingualism

dis – establish -ment disestablishment

un - count -able uncountable

Fromkin and Rodman (73)

In the above examples, it could be observed that all the circumfixed words are formed

with a formula: prefix + root word + suffix e.g. un (prefix) + friend (root word) + -ly (suffix)

will give the word “unfriendly”; the same process applies to other words given. This,

evidently, shows that more than one process of affixation could be applied to a single word to

create some English words.

To sum up this unit, affixation has been identified as one of the processes of word-

formation. Affixation is an important process of morphology through which both derivational

and inflectional processes of morphology are realized. Affixation could be broadly divided

into two sub-processes: prefixation, and suffixation. There exist other minor processes of

affixation, too, such as infixation and circumfixation. Prefixation is a sub-process of affixation

in which morphemes known as prefixes are added before the “operand” (bases, roots, stems).
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Suffixation, on the other hand, occurs when an affix or morpheme known as a suffix is added

after the operand. Infixation is another way of forming words when an affix known as an infix

breaks the root of the word and inserts itself in the middle. Circumfixation, as reviewed, is

realized when both prefix and suffix come before and after a single root word.

4.3 Alternation

Both languages exhibit this feature even though total modification or suppletion

could be exclusively seen in English irregular verbs while changing from present to past tense

(as in go – went or be – was ) or in comparative forms of some adjectives (as in good – better

or bad – worse) or even in using the bound plural form (morpheme) -/en/ added to the

underlying form ‘ox’ (to form ‘oxen’) as a suppletive alternate of /-s, -z, -iz/ ( which are the

normal plural morpheme); but none could be found in Hausa.

4.3.1 Total Modification in English

In English, total modification occurs when the whole word changes. According to

Matthews, total modification is usually called suppletion (139). Rubba is of the view that

suppletion occurs when the whole word changes rather than having a suffix. Suppletion is a

bit tricky but is also rare in English (204). It is the result of a historical process frozen in time.

Briefly, historically there were two words with similar meanings in the language (English),

typically used in different dialects. Over time, the two words merged into one paradigm. For

instance, in an earlier stage of English there were two words for ‘to be’, ‘wesan’ and ‘eom’.

These two were combined into one, and forms of both formed the paradigm for ‘to be’ e.g.

‘be’ – ‘am’ – ‘are’ – ‘is’ – ‘was’ – ‘were’ – ‘been’. Other examples include: mouse/mice,

louse/lice, catch/caught, go/went, etc.

Matthews is of the view that suppletion is any alternation which cannot be explained

by any rule (94). For instance, the English bound plural form (morpheme) /-en/ added to the

underlying form ‘ox’ is a suppletive alternative of /– s; – z’; – iz/ because English grammar
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has no rule for the occurrence of the alternant. Furthermore, Asher extends the term

‘suppletion’ to a much commoner phenomenon whereby different affixes fulfill the same

inflectional function, e.g. the different plural suffixes ‘books’, ‘children’, ‘formulae’, etc (58).

According to Aronoff and Fudeman suppletion takes place when the syntax requires a form of

a lexeme that is not morphologically predictable (168). They cite the example of the paradigm

for the verb is which is characterized by suppletion. Thus, am, are, is, was, were and be have

completely different phonological shapes, which are not predictable on the basis of the

paradigms of other English verbs.

In addition to that, suppletion could be found with pronouns; compare I and me or

she and her. Other examples of complete suppletion could be found in verbs (e.g. go – went,

is – was); nouns (e.g. louse – lice); adjectives (e.g. some - much - most), etc. Examples of

suppletion given by Rubba (204) include:

(a) be – am – are – is – was – were – been

(b) go – went – gone

(c) good – better – best

(d) bad – worse – worst

(e) some – more – most

Fromkin and Rodman posit that some English words tend to violate the regular rules

of inflectional morphology in forming their plurals (nouns) or past form (verbs). These

irregular forms must be listed separately in our mental lexicons as suppletive forms. That is,

one cannot use the regular rules of inflectional morphology to add affixes to words that are

exceptions like ‘bring/brought’, but must replace the non-inflected form with another word

(92).
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4.3.2 Partial Modification in English

Different linguists will inexorably view and describe things differently. Based on

Matthews’ division, partial suppletion is otherwise known as vowel change because it

involves a process whereby changes occur in words as a result of changes in vowels (136).

According to Aronoff and Fudeman, in certain cases, such as with catch – caught or think –

thought and other similar verbs like them in English, it is most convenient to speak of partial

suppletion. In these cases, the initial phoneme or phonemes of the word remain the same, but

there is both internal change and change to the end of the word (loss of segments) and

addition of a past tense indicator [t] as in: think – thought, sleep –slept etc (168).

Matthews also posits that in English the partial modification of man to men is an

obvious example; another is the more extensive change in ‘catch’ - ‘caught’ or ‘teach’ -

‘taught’, vowel change – [æ] - [e] (as in man – men), [i] - [æ] (as in sing - sang and [^] in

sung), [u:] - [o] (as in shoot - shot), [au] - [ai] (as in mouse - mice), conversely [ai] - [au] (as

in find - found). In postulating vowel change or any other sort of ‘change’, one has to check

that the direction of the process can be justified as seen in the examples below: (136)

(a) Examples of vowel change in the formation of plurals:

woman – women

foot – feet

tooth – teeth

goose – geese

(b) Examples of vowel change in the formation of past tense:

come – came

blow – blew

grow – grew
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Another type of modification involves accent or tonal pattern, which, Matthews

observes, is in close association with a process of affixation. Thus, when the shift

accompanies the suffix, the suffixes always require the stress in that position; in such cases,

the accentual modification can be seen as a direct repercussion of the process of suffixation

(139). These instances occur in English word – formation. Examples in ‘generation’ or

‘automation’ the stress changes from its position in the bases ‘generate’ and ‘automate’ to the

syllable before the suffix – ion.

There is a pattern in English, for example, in which a noun is accented on the first

syllable (‘conflict, ‘insult, ‘export) and a corresponding verb on the second (conf’lict, in’sult,

ex’port). In most grammars, the noun is said to be derived from the verb. But an alternative

view is that the two stress patterns (for nouns and verbs) are added equally to roots that, in

themselves, are unaccented. In this analysis, both ‘conflict and conf”lict consist of the root

conflict (unstressed) plus what has sometimes been called a ‘superfix’ – an accentual affix

superimposed on it.

Other examples of the stress change in English include:

Nouns Verbs

‘refuse re’fuse

‘import im’port

‘export ex’port

‘combine com’bine

‘implant im’plant

‘transport trans’port

According to the free encyclopedia (2008), this process is called stress shift. Here,

stress shift is considered as another process of word-formation where no affix is added to the

base, but the stress is shifted from one syllable to the other. With the stress shift comes a
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change in category. For Yule, stress shift is termed “conversion”. Yule posits that “a change

in the function of a word, for example, when a noun comes to be used as a verb (without any

reduction), is generally known as ‘conversion’” (67). He (Yule) is of the view that conversion

can be subdivided into: ‘category change’ and ‘functional shift’. He cites examples of nouns,

such as ‘paper’, ‘butter’, ‘bottle’, and ‘vacation’, which can, via the process of conversion,

come to be used as verbs, as in the following sentences:

- He’s papering the bedroom walls.

- Have you buttered the toast?

- We bottled the home-brew last night.

- They’re vacationing in France.

Yule (67).

Furthermore, the conversion process is particularly productive in modern English, with

new uses occurring frequently. The conversion can involve verbs becoming nouns, with

guess, must and spy as the sources of a guess, a must and a spy. More so, phrasal verbs (to

print out, to take over) also become nouns (a printout, a takeover); one complex verb

combination (want to be) has become a very useful noun as in:

- He isn’t in the group, he’s just a wannabe.

Verbs (see through, stand up) also become adjectives, as in see – through material or

a stand-up comedian. Or adjectives, such as ‘dirty’, ‘empty’, ‘total’, ‘crazy’ and ‘nasty’, can

become the verbs to dirty, to empty, to total, or the nouns a crazy and a nasty. One may even

hear of “people doing the nasty”.

Cornelius (2008), on his part, sees conversion as another highly productive word-

formation process whereby a word class changes without any morphological marking.

Examples:

(1) - party (noun), party (verb)

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- We will be at the party (noun).

- They like to party (verb)

(2) - Must (noun), must (verb)

- It is a must that you call him (noun).

- You must eat your soup (verb).

Cornelius (2008)

It should be borne in mind that conversion exists when it is clear that a word has

been “copied” from one word class to another.

4.3.2.1 Subtraction

The final subtype of modification, as Matthews observes, is of subtraction, otherwise

known as “minus formation” (42). Subtraction has been dealt with many times since

Bloomfield’s classic exposition in the 1930s, as observed Matthews He posits that subtraction

can be seen where masculine in French seems to be derived from feminine, e.g. ‘bone’ (good)

feminine - ‘bon’ (good) masculine (by the removal of /e/); ‘bonne’ feminine - ‘bo’ masculine

(by the removal of /n/ with accompanying nasalization of /‫ﬤ‬/, etc. Furthermore, in English,

subtraction could be noticed in some verbs when changed to past form, e.g. meet - met, bleed

– bled, etc (43).

Based on the findings, alternation otherwise known as modification has been identified

as one of the processes of word-formation in English. Modification occurs when changes

occur in words as a result of changes in vowels or the entire form of the word. When a whole

word changes its form completely to form another, it is referred to as ‘suppletion’ in the words

of

Fudeman is of the same view with Asher, Matthew and Schane that complete

modification or suppletion could not be predicted; hence could not be explained by any rule.
 69

Furthermore, Fromkin and Rodman (199) accept such a view of irregularities in the formation

of suppletion.

To summarize this part, it appears important to mention that this work finds all works

cited as vital even though there are deficiencies in some respects. Thus, for suppletion to be

complete, it should be a whole modification in which the words are changed completely.

These words could be either verbs derived from nouns, past forms of verbs derived from

present forms or even adjectives derived from nouns, etc. Furthermore, it is observed that if

vowels are changed to form another category of word, it is called partial modification.

Aronoff and

Fudeman observe that in such a process (what they termed ‘partial suppletion’); the

initial phoneme(s) of the word is retained while changes occur internally on the vowel(s). The

internal change could be a single vowel as in man - men; sing- sang or doubles as in tooth -

teeth, foot – feet, etc (245).

Moreover, some linguists like: Bloomfield, Matthews, Yule and Cornelius identify

other sub-types of modification, e.g. stress shift, conversion and subtraction. Yule’s

contribution appears more explanatory because he divides stress shift, or what he and

Cornelius call conversion, into two, namely: category change and functional shift (261).

Matthews adds that modification could also be in the form of subtraction – this happens when

vowel are removed from some words to form other words. This linguistic phenomenon mostly

occurs in forming French words (182). It has been observed that in such cases, the last

consonant is subtracted to derive masculine from feminine (in French). In English, subtraction

may occur within the stem to form other words (meet - met). According to some linguists, this

process should not be considered as one of the processes of vowel change or alternation of the

operand, but rather a special instance of affixation, involving what has sometimes been called

a ‘discontinuous morph’ (or morpheme realized ‘discontinuously’).

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4.3.3 Partial Modification in Hausa

We noted here that vowel alternation or modification in Hausa occurs only within

verb stems and the derived forms are nouns. Thus, all the vowels alternate from the Hausa

verb stems to noun forms, e.g. gaada inherit (verb) – gaadoo inheritance (noun) - vowel /a/

alternate with /o/; buga beat (verb) – buguu beat

(noun) - vowel /a/ alternate with /u/; zaânaa draw (verb) – zaânee drawing (noun)

– vowel /a/ alternate with /e/, etc.

Consider the following cases given by Fagge (26):

(i) /a/ alternating with /i/

Verb stem derived form gloss

Tuukaa tuukii driving

Taafaa taafii clapping

tsaraa tsarii lying out

buudaa buudii opening

(ii) /a/ alternating with /u/

kaamaa kaamuu catching

buga buguu beating

saamaa saamuu obtaining

(iii) /a/ alternating with /e/:

kaamaa kaâmee catching

zaanaa zaânee drawing

aura aúree marriage

jeeraa jẻeree arrangement

(iv) /e/ alternating with /a/:

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tseefee tsiifaa combing

feekee fiikaa sharpening

deebee diibaa plucks

(v) /o/ alternating with /u/

sooyaa suuyaa frying

googaa guugaa rubbing

(vi) /a/ alternation with /o/

gaada gaadoo inherent

toonaa toonoo dig

gooyaa gooyoo carry on back

Fagge (26).

One important thing noticed by Rufa’i is that alternation, as a kind of derivation, is

also combined with a change in tone pattern. In Hausa, according to him, specifically the tone

of the first syllable (if the base is a verb) is normally high but becomes low after the

derivation (9). Examples:

Base Class Meaning Derived word Class Meaning

Taafa V to clap taafii n(abst) clapping

dasa V to plant dashee n(abst) planting

saya V buy sayee n(abst) buying

fasa V cut open fasoo n(abst) cutting

buga V beat buguu n(abst) beating

daama V mix daamuu n(abst) mixing

ciiza V to bite ciizoo n(abst) biting

jeefa V to throw jiifaa n(abst) throwing

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Concerning partial modification, both the languages exhibit this feature. English, for

instance, features it in verbs (while changing from present to past e.g. bleed – bled {/i: / - /e/})

and nouns (while forming their plurals e.g. louse –lice {/au/ - /ai/}). In Hausa, on the other

hand, vowel modification or alternation takes place where the root word is altered (basically

the vowels) and it occurs with a change in tone pattern. Specifically, the tone of the first

syllable (if the base is a verb) is normally high but becomes low after the derivation. Thus the

alternation occurs from the verb stems to noun forms, as in auraa (to marry) – verb – auree

(marriage) – noun {/a/ – /e/}. Thus, the research revealed that alternation in Hausa creates

noun forms from verb forms.

4.4 Backformation

One of the productive words – formation processes of English is backformation but

Hausa lacks it. Some English words appear ‘naturally’ with morphemes that seem to be

affixes. Some words are, therefore, created by removing such morphemes. Such words are

mostly nouns and the created words are verbs (that is, nouns are backformed into verbs) as in:

editor – edit.

4.5 Blending

This is a common process of word-formation in English, however Hausa does not

employ this process in forming any of its words; thus parts of two words are taken – blending

the initial position of the first word with the final position of the second word and a new word

is created; for instance: television + broadcast – tele (vision) + (broad) cast = telecast. Many

English words have originally come out through the process of blending. Thus, many linguists

such as: Quirk and Greenbaum (449), Yule (66), Fromkin and Rodman (89), Rubba (64),

among others, cite some examples of words formed via blending,

e.g. –brunch (‘a meal subsuming breakfast and lunch’) is derived from
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br (eakfast) + (l) unch.

- motel from motor + hotel.

- smog, from smoke + fog
- transistor from transfer + resistor
- spork from spoon + fork
- chunnel from channel + tunnel
- chortle from chuckle + snort
- bit from binary + digit
- urinalysis from urine + analysis
- crabapple from cranberry + apple
- broasted from broiled + roasted
- telethon from television + marathon, etc

Furthermore, in order to describe the mixing of languages, people use terms which

are formed via blending. For instance, Franglais (French + English), Spanglish (Spanish +

English), Hinglish (Hindi + English), Tanglish (Tamil + English), Banglish (Bangla +

English), Taglish (Tagalog + English), and in the Nigerian context, we come across Engausa

(English + Hausa), etc.

This research has shown that even though both compounding and blending use a

combination of words, blending takes only a part of each word (the other part is deleted),

while compounding combines the whole words to create new words.

4.6 Borrowing

Borrowing is a linguistic feature that not only English and Hausa exhibit in forming

their new terms, but it appears universal to all living languages. English, for instance, borrows

words from several languages of the world like Arabic,Bantu, Dutch, German, African

languages, just to mention a few. Hausa employs borrowing too which increases its

vocabulary. In Hausa, borrowing differs on two grounds: the level of contact between the two

languages concerned and the level of dependency on the donor language by the borrowing

language. Thus, Hausa borrows numerous words from the two international languages it

comes in contact with: English and Arabic. Linguists like Ahmed Daura (70) observes that

two devices have commonly been employed while borrowing words from Arabic to Hausa.
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(1) By changing the form of the source words to reflect the structural form of the Hausa

language e.g. littafi from kitabun (book) allo from allauh (slate), Annabi from Annabiyu

(Prophet) etc.

(2) By adopting the source words as they are in their Arabic form e.g. addu’a (prayer),

jarida (newspaper), Kur’ani (Qur’an) etc.

Due to intimate contact with similar Arabic words the original meaning of some

Hausa words has been slightly changed and adopted their Arabic counterparts as in:

The original Hausa words The adopted Arabic words Gloss

Ubangiji Allah God

Kushewa Kabari Grave

Sani Ilimi Knowledge

Tsotsayi Hadari accident

Thus, some Hausa linguists, such as Abubakar (172), Zarruk (78) and Wurma (197),

suggest some Hausa words that are borrowed from Arabic in relation to religion,

administration, judiciary, scholarship, food, dress, days, accounting, culture, etc. Examples of

such words include:

Hausa Arabic Gloss

Allah Allah God

annabi an-nabiy prophet Religion

sallaa salat prayer

daulaa daulatun kingdom

mulkii mulkun administration Administration

hukumaa mukumatun government

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sharriaa sharia law

hukumcii hukum judgment Judiciary

adalcii al -adl justice

maalamii mu’allim teacher

daalibii talibun student Scholarship

darasii darasun lesson

sukarii sukkarun sugar

albasaa al-basl onion Food

inabii inabun grape

kaftaanii kaftan long shirt for men

jabbaa jubbatun sleeveless gown Dress

farmalan hurmulatun waist coat

asabar al-sibr Saturday

alhamis al-khamis Thursday Days

jumuaa al-juma’a Friday

ishirin ishirun twenty

talaatin thalathun thirty Accounting

arbain arba’un forty

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saabuluu sabunn soap

kazantaa gazaratun dirty Customs

janaa’izaa janaza funeral etc

It is found out that borrowing Arabic words in these areas is likely to continue as a

result of change of governments, people’s way of life and economy. These changes, however,

are not hidden; as such the media houses will continue to search for words that will explain

these changes. Furthermore, it should be noticed that Hausa people have been borrowing

many scientific, technical as well as economic words from languages in their bid to write

science in Hausa: scientific researches are being conducted because of the ever increasing

demand of our lives. However, the borrowed words should be simple and easy to pronounce

by Hausa people. The contact with the British has paved the way for the intrusion of new

ideas, concepts, education and technology into the Hausa social life. Thus, it was natural for

Hausa to adopt the English strange words in relation to administration, judiciary, security,

scholarship, science and technology, trade, food, dress, etc. Some of these words include the

following:

Hausa English

gwamnaà governor

kwamishinaà commissioner Administration

ministaà minister

jooji judge

lauyaà lawyer Judiciary

kootu court
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samanja sergeant - major

sufeetoò inspector Security

manjo major

furaamaareè primary school

furincifal principal Scholarship

digirii degree

janareetoo generator

lantarkii electricity Science and technology

reediyoo radio

bankii bank

farashii price Trade

kamfanii company

burodi bread

ket cake Food

farfeesuu pepper soup

kwat coat

shat shirt dress

singileeti singlet etc

This is far from being a complete list of the borrowed words, but it will suffice to

give the reader an insight of the extent to which Hausa is indebted. The present study has,
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however, found this linguistic borrowing useful for showing the extent to which English (a

language that has survived through borrowing) has, in turn, given words to Hausa.

Also Salim Bala explains the linguistic borrowing of English loan words in Hausa by

showing the various assimilative processes in which English words undergo (through phonetic

modification and adaptation) to rhyme like the original Hausa words (98). Furthermore,

Rufa’i identifies two processes which could be discussed under borrowing: loan blending and

loan shift (15).

4.6.1 Loan Blending

According to Rufa’i (15), loan blending is:

The process of creating new idioms whereby borrowers adopt

part of a model and replace part of it with something in their
language. That is something from the giver language and something
from the receiver language are blended together to give a different
idea or meaning.

Consider the following:

Arabic Meaning Hausa Meaning

jaahilii an ignorant person jaahilcii ignorance

makirii a cunny person maakircii cunningness

shakiyyi rogue shakiyancii roguery

Here, agentive nouns in Arabic have Hausa suffixes added to them to give common

nouns in Hausa. For instance, Hausa borrowed the word ”jaahil” and then blend it with the

Hausa suffix “cii” to create the word “jaahilcii”.

4.6.2 Loan Shift

Another feature of borrowing, which involves lexical and semantic changes, is loan

shift. Rufa’i (ibid) is of the view that loan shift could be called loan translation or semantic
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loan. He cites examples of a few Arabic loan words; the Arabic models carrying one meaning

and another after they have been borrowed into Hausa.

Arabic model meaning Hausa loan meaning

al’aayaa verse laayaa amulet

al’azan call to prayer laadan prayer caller

ard land lardii provinc

In sum, borrowing has been recognized as one of the major processes of forming

Hausa words. As already mentioned, we have seen that Hausa borrows a great deal of its

vocabulary form Arabic because of the continuous contact that exists between Arabic and

Hausa languages. Furthermore, Hausa also borrows from English to build up its vocabulary

even though that of Arabic is greater. We should note that Arabic and English are not the only

languages that Hausa lay its hands on in terms of borrowing, but they are of the fore front.

Thus, Hausa borrows from local languages too (the Nigerian languages that surround it), for

instance, Yoruba, Kanuri, Fulfulde and Nupe.

Furthermore, a special type of borrowing called calque or loan translation exist, both

in English and Hausa. In this process, a direct translation of the elements of words takes place

in the borrowed language into the target language. For instance, the French word

‘ungratteciel’ was literally translated to ‘a scrape – sky’ which English loan it as ‘skyscraper’;

others include:

Donor Target language The words

Donor Target language The words

German English Lehwort loan-word

German English Ubermensch Superman

French English Ungrattecial Superman

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In Hausa, on the other hand, Rufa’i (15) identifies two processes of calque that Hausa

employs: loan blending and loan shift. Creative new idioms by blending some parts of the

giver language and some part of the receiver language to give a different idea or meaning is

considered as loan blending e.g. ‘jaahil’ is an Arabic word which means ‘ignorant’; Hausa

takes the word and blended it with a Hausa suffix “cii” to creat the word “jahilcii”. Loan shift

or what

He calls semantic loan involves lexical and semantic changes. Examples: “ard” means

land but when Hausa loan it, it becomes ‘lardii’ which is semantically shift to ‘province’.

4.7 Clipping

Clipping is a very common linguistic phenomenon in English. Thus, a lot of English

words are formed via clipping, such as fax (‘facsimile’), gas (‘gasoline’), bra (‘brassiere’), cab

(‘cabriolet’), ad (‘advertisement’), condo (‘condominium’), fan (‘fanatic’), sitcom (‘situation

comedy’), phone (‘telephone’), plane (‘airplane’), bro (‘brother’), pro (‘professional’), veg

(‘vegetate’ as in veg out in front of the TV), sub (‘substitute or submarine’), info

(‘information’), flu (‘influenza’), etc. Furthermore, Yule (66) observes that the educational

sector encourages clipping because many words that underwent clipping could be found there;

he says that “there must be something about educational environments that encourages

clipping because just about every word gets reduced as in chem, exam, gym, lab, math, poly-

sci, prof, and typo.Yule” (66).

Similarly, English speakers like to clip each others names – that is, what Aronoff and

Fudeman (216) called nicknames as in Al (‘Albert’), Ed (‘Edward’), Rob (‘Robert’), Trish

(‘Patricia’), Sue (‘Susan’), Tom (‘Thomas’), Sam (‘Samuel’), etc.

4.7.1 Types of Clipping

Clipping in English, according to Cornelius (154), could be divided into three types:
 81

(1) Front clipping – This is the process of trimming words in the front. In this order, the

front syllable is taken to stand as a word. For example: airplane - plane, telephone -

phone, etc.

(2) Back clipping – This is another process of clipping where the trimming takes place

in the back thus, the back syllable is trimmed. For instance: advertisement - ad,

gasoline - gas, fanatic - fan, polytechnic - poly, etc.

(3) Front and back clipping – This is where the clipping process takes place both in

front and back of the word, for example, Influenza – flu, etc. However, Fagge posits

that clipping in Hausa is of two types: back-clipping and front – clipping (21). By

way of an example, let us consider the following cases:

a. Back - clipping:

(i) Personal names

Full Form Clipped Form

Abubakar Bukar

Muhammad Madu/Muda

Khadija Dija/Dije

Aishatu Shatu

(ii) Names of items

Apart from names of people as mentioned above, back clipping could be noticed in other

names (of items), such as:

Full form clipping form gloss

kuskure kure make a mistake

kwakwalwa kwalwa brain substance

hajiijuwa juwaa giddiness

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b. Front – clipping

Full form clipping form gloss

fate – fate fate a musky food

kuli – kuli kuli groundnut cake

It has been found that in English many words happen to be clipped related to

education sector, names of people and other fields of endeavor, for example: poly

(polytechnic), Chris (Christopher) and fan (fanatic), respectively. However, in Hausa, clipping

occurs either in personal names or other sectors; excluding the educational sector, for

example: Manu (Sulaimanu) and kure (kuskure).

Furthermore, the research revealed that in English three types of clipping are

observed: front, back and the combination of the two (front and back), while in Hausa the first

two are common. More so, one important thing to put into cognizance is that even though

blending and clipping may appear similar, yet clipping takes place within a single existing

word, while blending takes place between two words. We should noe here that, though

clipping appears common in English, it is rather informal than formal.

4.8 Coinage

This fature is found only in English but Hausa lacks it. In English, therefore,

different sources of words that are formed via coinage include invented trade names, brand

names and words from Greek, as well as names of the company inventors. Examples:

Kodak

Nylon
Invented trade names
Orion

Dacron
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Xerox

Kleenex
Brand names
Jell-O

Vaseline

Thermometer (from “Thermos hot” plus “metron” nesure)

Acrophobia (from akros “topmost” and phobia “fear”) From Greek words

Pornophobia (from prone “harlot” and phobia “fear”)

Sandwich

Hoover

Celsius

Hertz etc.

4.9 Compounding

Compounding is a common process of word- formation that exists both in English and

Hausa.

4.9.1 The Elements of Compounding in English

Asher observes that compounding is a linguistic unit, which is composed of elements

that function independently in other circumstances (94). This brings the question of how many

elements make a compound. According to Fromkin and Rodman, compounds may contain

two or more free roots, thus, some compounds have more than one root and bound morpheme,

as in ‘wastepaper basket’; ‘waste’ + ‘paper’ + ‘basket’ and ‘truck pusher’; ‘truck’ +

‘push’ + ‘er’ (34).

The compounds of English words, therefore, may consist of two or more words,

which could be either from different categories or even from the same category of words.
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Though two-word compounds are the most common in English, it would be difficult to state

an upper limit, for instance, ‘three-time loser’.

Other examples of compound words include the following:

(a) Two-word compounds:

- classroom = class + room

- skyscraper = sky + scraper

- wallpaper = wall + paper

- good-looking = good + looking

- full-time = full + time (ibid)

(b) More than two – word compounds

These are group of compounds, which are formed with more than one root words, thus;

- commander – in – chief = commander + in + chief

- brother – in – law = brother + in + law

- second – in – command = second + in + command

- sergeant – at – arms = sergeant + at + arms

- mother – of – pearl = mother + of + pearl (ibid)

- four-dimensional-space-time = four + dimensional + space + time

This shows that the elements of compounds could be two, three, four (as in four-

dimensional–space-time) or even more (as observed in the example given by Aronoff and

Fudeman (2005) – “She is a high voltage electricity grid systems supervisor”).

4.9.2 The Elements of Hausa Compounds

According to Rufa’i compounding, in Hausa, involves several combinations of

elements, such as noun + noun, verb + noun, adjective + noun and some others (2). Examples:

(i) Noun + noun

bakan – gizo (bow of spider) = rainbow;

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karen – motaa (dog of motor) = bus or truck attendant

‘yar – sandaa (daughter of stick) = police woman (ibid)

(ii) Verbal noun + noun

kisan – kai (killing of head) = murder

jin – kai (hearing of head/self) = arrogance

cin – zumaa (eating of honey) = collection of honey from bee hives usually by

using smoke to drive the bees away (ibid).

(iii) Verbal noun + noun

hada – kai (joining head) = unity

auna – arziki (weigh wealth) = escape danger or evil happening

baata – rai (spoil soul) = to be angry (ibid)

(iv) Adjective + Noun

bakin – jinii (darkness of blood) = being hated

jan-halii (red character) = bravery

farar-zuuciyaa (white heart) = good intention or good will (ibid).

4.9.3 Noun Compounds in English and Hausa

In English noun compounds are those compounds that perform the functions of

nouns, while in Hausa, they are the compounds which consist of two noun bases for the

formation of compound nouns. Thus, in English, for instance, noun compounds could have

the combination of some elements which include: subject and verb (e.g. earthquake), verb and

object (e.g. call – girl), verb and adverbial (e.g. walking stick), verbless compounds (e.g.

blood stain) and Bahuvrihi compounds (e.g. blockhead). In Hausa, on the other hand, the
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structure of noun compounds are always noun + noun as in ilimin manya (adult education),

mulkin- kai (self independence), juuyin mulki (coup d’etat) etc.

4.9.4 Adjective Compounds in English and Hausa

Adjective compounds, in English, are those compounds that function as adjectives;

while in Hausa, they are the compounds that are based with adjectival morphemes – in other

words, they have adjectives as their core. The English adjective compounds are formed with

the help of different elements such as: verb and object (e.g. breath-taking), verb and adverbial

(e.g. law – abiding) and verb less compounds (e.g. homesick). Hausa adjective compounds, on

the other hand, are formed with the help of ‘adjective + noun’ formula as in gajen-hakurii

(impatience).

4.9.5 Verb Compounds in English and Hausa

Verb compounds, in English, are those compounds which act as verbs such as ‘sight

see and baby – sit’ while in Hausa, verb – based compounds are those compounds which have

verbs as their core, as in gamoo-da-katar (accidental fortune).

Apart from those discussed so far, Hausa has additional categories of compounds

which do not exist in English, for instance: adverb – based compounds (shekaran-jiya – day

before yesterday), adverbial compounds (dazu-dazu– a while ago), and idiophone – based

compounds (subul da baka – slip of tongue) and pronoun based compounds (Ta annabi, a

feminine nick name).

4.9.6 The Elements of Hausa and English Compounds

Several elements combine together to make both English and Hausa compounds.

These elements obviously function independently in other circumstances as Asher (1994) and

Rufa’i (1979) confirm. Thus, both English and Hausa compounds could contain two elements,

three elements or even more. However, Fromkin and Rodman (84) observe that English

compounds may contain two or more free roots thus, some compounds have more than one
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root and bound morpheme as in table – cleaner = ‘table’ + ‘clean’ + ‘er’; where ‘table’ and

‘clean’ are roots and ‘er’ is a bound morpheme (which has a semantic value of ‘doer of’);

while Hausa compounds may contain two or more roots but no bounds morpheme is

employed here as in: wasan – kwaikwayoo (play or drama), ‘yan – fashii (armed robbers) and

rufaa – ido (trick) where each element may stand as a root or a free morpheme. Let us look at

some examples on the two languages:

cat lover

finger print Two word compounds in English

white wash

fidda kai (charity)

cin – hancii (corruption) Two word compounds in Hausa

jan – halii (courage)

mother – in – law
More than two word compounds in English
four – dimensional space – time

nagari – na – kowa (upright person) More than two word

Compounds in Hausa
yaakii – da – jahilci (literacy education)

Now, it is important to observe that the combination of the elements that makes

English compounds and Hausa compounds differs. Hence, whereas some elements could be

combined to make compounds in both the languages, some elements could be used in just one

language for instance, noun + noun, verbal noun + noun, verb + noun, adjective + noun could

be found in English and Hausa. However, combinations such as adjective + adjective, noun +

adjective, verb + adjective, adjective + verb, noun + verb, noun + -ing participle, noun + -ed

participle and adjective or adverb + -ing participle could only be found in Hausa.
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To sum it up, compounding as a process of word-formation plays a vital role in

words creation not only in Hausa, but in other languages of the world, e.g. English and

Arabic. As seen so far, compounding helps to form many of the English and Hausa words, far

more than those mentioned in this research work. The research finds this very important

because it helps in displaying the unification of linguistic elements existing in different

languages of the world.

4.10 Reduplication

Reduplication has to do with morphemic repetition. It is a morphological process that

both English and Hausa use while building some of their vocabularies. It could be full or

partial as Rufa’i (10), Al-Hassan (22), Aronoff and Fudeman (265) and Encyclopedia (2008)

posit.

4.10.1 Types of Reduplication in English and Hausa

According to Rufa’i, duplication can be either full or partial. A partial duplication is

the one in which a part of a base morpheme is reduplicated. A full duplication is the one in

which the base as a whole is duplicated (10). Furthermore, Al-Hassan posits that two types of

reduplication may occur in a language: complete reduplication, where the whole word is

copied and partial reduplication, where only a part of the word is copied (220).

4.10.1.1 Complete Reduplication in English and Hausa

The complete reduplication is otherwise known as total or full reduplication, which

occurs when the whole word is copied. In other words, complete reduplication takes place

when the whole of the operand is reduplicated, that is, completely repeated. In the words of

Rufa’i (265), complete reduplication occurs when the base of a word is repeated. Quirk and

Greenbaum (448) and Aronoff and Fudeman (167) observe that most reduplications are highly

informal or familiar, many of which are derived from the nursery (e.g. ‘din – din’ for dinner)
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or children acquiring language (for instance, an English speaking child says ‘shoe’ for one

shoe, but ‘shoe shoe’ (complete reduplication) for two shoes.

Furthermore, Matthews (1974, cited in Agezi (20) observes that reduplication in

English may be:

a. Suffixal – suffixal reduplication occurs when the end of the base is repeated.

b. Infixal – Infixal reduplication happens in a case where the structure of the base itself is

broken into parts and reduplication formative comes at the middle.

c. Prefixal or initial – In this kind of reduplication, the reduplicated formative is added

before the base and it is the beginning of the base which is repeated (Matthews 310).

Quirk and Greenbaum have agreed with the above classification that “this difference

between the two elements (involve in reduplication) may be in the initial consonants, as

in walkie-talkie or in the medial vowels e.g. criss-cross” (Quirk and Greenbaum 448).

At this juncture, it should be observed that even though reduplication could be

categorized into two bases – in one base, reduplication is viewed according to its morphemic

analysis (where three groups – suffixal, infixal or prefixal reduplication are realized). In the

other base, reduplication is viewed according to the processes where changes occur on the

reduplicative (here: partial and complete reduplications are observed). Though the general

categorization is the latter, yet the former is also important morphologically.

4.10.1.2 Complete Reduplication in Hausa (Cikakka Nannage)

Complete reduplication or full duplication as in the words of Rufa’i, occurs when the

base of a word is repeated. In his view, Rufa’i mentions that an area in which we see much of

full duplication is idiophones. Examples:

lakakai – lakakai (slowly)

kyamus – kyamus (thin)

lif – lif – (blooming - as when trees grow green leaves) (ibid)

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According to Fagge ( 36), complete reduplication in Hausa, occurs in three areas:

(a) Qualification compounds

These happen when words are reduplicated to indicate an amount or number of

things. Thus, it is produced by a complete reduplication of the stem base. Consider the

following examples:

Words Complete reduplication derived

rumbu (store) rumbu-rumbu (in storages)

jaka (bag) jaka-jaka (in bags)

dami (bundle) dami-dami (in bundles) (ibid)

(b) Numerical compounds

Numerical compounds could be produced by complete reduplication of the base.

Consider the following cases;

Word Complete reduplication

uku (three) uku – uku (in threes)

hudu (four) hudu – hudu (in fours)

biyar (five) biyar – biyar (in fives) (ibid)

(c) Color based compounds

These occur when colors are produced through complete reduplication of the stem base

(of colors). Consider the following cases

Word Complete reduplication derived form

rawaya (yellow) rawaya – rawaya (yellowish)

fari (white) fari – fari (whitish)

jaa (red) jaa – jaa (reddish) (ibid)

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Furthermore, Al-Hassan (22) posits that complete reduplication could show

pluralization, intensification and detensification.

(i) Pluralization

Salim (198) is of the view that reduplicative pluralization occurs in Hausa when the base

(singular) is reduplicated to form the plural of a simple nominal; he says: “In the case of

simple nominal, the singular base form is simply repeated with no change either segmentally

or tonally”. He goes further to cite examples:

Singular Plural

yaakii (war) yake – yake (wars)

zaagii (abuse) zaage – zaage (abuses)

buguu (to hit) buge – buge (to hit several times) (ibid)

(ii) Intensification

Reduplication could occur in full form in Hausa to show intensification. For

intensification, the base form is copied without any segmental or tonal change.

Examples:

Simple forms Intensified form

yau (today) yau – yau (compulsorily, today)

yanzu (now) yanzu – yanzu (immediately)

kusa (near) kusa – kusa (very much close) (ibid).

(iii) Detensification

Complete reduplication occurs to show detensification in Hausa. In detensification,

there is a segmental change, shortening the final vowel of the base form in the reduplicated

form. Examples:

Simple form Detensified form

bakii (black) baki – baki (blackish)

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doogoo (tall) doogo – doogo (not quite tall)

mahaukacii (lunatic) mahaukaci – mahaukaci (not quite mad) (ibid)

4.10.1.3 Partial Reduplication in English and Hausa

Reduplication is said to be partial when only part of the operand or root is

reduplicated. Matthews (134) affirms that “It is partial (in the sense that only part of the base

is reduplicated), and it is prefixal and initial (in the sense that the reduplicative form is added

before the base and it is the beginning of the base which is repeated” (Matthews (134).

Examples of partial reduplication include zigzag, rift – raft, tip – top, wishy

- washy, higgledy – piggleddy, etc.

4.10.1.4 Partial Reduplication in Hausa (Ragaggen Nannage)

Partial reduplication occurs when a part of the stem base is duplicated –the part could

be the initial part of the base, the medial part of the base or even the final part of the base as

Al-Hassan (24) observes: “Partial reduplication involves the copying of only part of the

word”. According to him, partial reduplication in Hausa is of two types “the first is the one in

which three consecutive phonemes in the word, the second of which is a syllabic are copied,

thus in isolation the copied form represents a syllable in Hausa – the CVC type the second one

is that in which a consonant in the root is copied in the reduplicated form” Al- Hassan (24).

(a) CVC reduplication

In Hausa, this kind of reduplication occurs in two respects: intensivization and

derivation of adjectival nouns.

(i) Intensivization. Examples:

Verb Derived form

saaree (to cut) sassaaree (cut several times)

gyaaraa (to repair or arrange) gyaggyaara (arrange several times)

keewayaa (to go round) kekkeewayaa (circumnavigation) (ibid)

 93

(ii) Derivation of adjectival nouns. Examples:

Nouns Adjectival nouns

karfii (strength) kakkarfaa (somebody strong or something hard)

kyaawoo (beauty) kyakkyaawaa (somebody or something beautiful)

saukii (cheap/simple) sassaukaa (something cheap or somebody simple)

(b) Consonantal reduplication

Consonantal reduplication occurs in two ways in Hausa, as Al-Hassan (25– 26)

observes. According to him, partial reduplication in form of consonantal reduplication is

employed in forming some Hausa plural words and in the derivation of exclamatory

adjectives.

(i) Pluralization

In pluralization, the reduplication of the last consonant in the base form is

accompanied by a change of last vowel. Where the change of vowel is from a front to a

central or back vowel, depalatlization occurs. The tonal pattern of the singular form is H - L

while the plural form is either L – H or HL – H. Examples:

Noun plural form

muuguu (wicked man) muggaa (wicked people)

tuduu (hill) tuddai (hills)

reeshee (branch) rassaa (branches) (ibid)

(ii) Derivation of exclamatory adjectives

In the derivation of exclamatory adjectives, the last consonant of the base word is

copied and inserted between two long /e/’s. The tone pattern of the base word is H – L (H),

while the exclamatory adjective has a low tone on the last syllable. All other syllables carry

high tone.

Base form exclamatory adjectives

 94

shirgi! (What a head!) shirgeegee!

dirki! (What a thrust!) dirkeekee!

malkwadi! (What a disfiguration!) malkwadeedee! (ibid)

According to Rufa’i (10), partial reduplication is generally prefixal, e.g.

yanka (cut) yayyanka (cut several times)

hankada (push) hahhankada (push several times)

lauya (blend) lallauya (bend several times) (ibid)

Fagge (37) posits that partial reduplication could be used to form some numerals in

Hausa. For instance: daddaya (one by one), bibbiyu (in twos), hurhudu (in fours), etc.

Based on the analysis, it is found that complete reduplication occurs in both English

and Hausa. Some English linguists like Quirk and Greenbaum (448) and Aronoff and

Fudeman (167) are of the view that most of the English reduplicatives are highly informal or

familiar and many are, therefore, derived from the nursery or while English children are

acquiring language. This shows that there are few English words that are formed via complete

reduplication.

Hausa, on the other hand, creates a lot of its vocabularies with the help of the process

of complete reduplication. For instance, Rufa’i posits that an area in which we see much of it

in Hausa is idiophones e.g. kif-kif (vigorously – as of walking on hard surface). Fagge (36)

adds that it could also be found in three areas: qualification compounds, numerical

compounds and color-based compounds, as in dami-dami (in bundles), tara- tara (in nines)

and baki – baki (blackish), respectively. In addition to that, Al- Hassan (22) posits that

complete reduplication could also be, in Hausa, to show pluralization (e.g. yakeyake – wars),

intensification (e.g. gobe-gobe – surely tomorrow) and detensification (e.g. mahaukaki-

mahaukaci – not quite mad).

 95

Concerning partial reduplication, it occurs in both English and Hausa. In English, it

occurs in a prefixal position that is when the beginning of the base is repeated e. g. zigzag. In

Hausa, however, it occurs when part of the stem base is duplicated which could be either

initially (as that of English), medial or even final part of the base as Al-Hassan (24) observes.

Furthermore, while English has only one type of partial reduplication, Hausa has two types:

CVC (as in fesa – {spray} – the stem base – fef {prefix} +fesa {the base} = feffesa {the

derived form}); or consonantal reduplication (as in takobi {sword}-the base form – takubba

{swords} i.e. reduplication of the last consonant).

In addition to that, reduplication could be viewed on its morphemic analysis. Based

on that, therefore, partial reduplication in English may be suffixal, infixal or prefixal as

Mathews (1974, cited in Agezi 28) and Quirk and Greenbaum (448) observe; for instance,

walkie – talkie, zigzag and criss –cross. In Hausa, on the other hand, partial reduplication is

generally prefixal as in: hankada (push) – the base form

hah (prefix) + hankada - the base

= hahhahnkada (push several times) – the derived form

At this juncture, a sample of the comparative analysis is given in a tabular form as

shown below;
 96

4.11 Morphological Processes Across The Two Languages

Process English Hausa Remarks

Acronym i-Pronounced alphabetically English forms several words

e.g. KSA (Kingdom of Saudi via acronyms while Hausa
Arabia) lacks this feature; thus, it does
not form words via acronyms.
ii- pronounced as words but
retain their capitals e.g. naca
(national agency for the
control of aids)

iii- pronounced as words and

lost their capitals e.g. zip
(Zone Improvement Plan)

Affixation I – prefixes – i- dafa-goshi (prefixes)- -Whereas prefixes,

ba + hausa =bahaushe infixes, and suffixes are
dis + agree = disagree (Hausaman) common to both English and
- co + existence = ii- ma + sakaa = masakaa
coexistence Hausa language,s circumfixes
(weaving
are common to English alone.
.factory)
ii- Infixes-abso + blomin +
lutely
- While infixatiiiion is
iii- dafa ciki (infixes)-
formal in Hausa, it appears
-turmi (motar)
informal in English.
absoblominlutely
- tur + a+ me = turame
(mortars)

iii – suffixes-beauty +fy

= iii dafa-keya(suffixes).
beautify
- gafara + ta = gafarta
(forgiveness)

iv – circumfixes

- un + count + able =
uncountable
 97

i- total modification- -Total modification is not

-go-went common in Hausa, but in
Alternation
English the feature is common.
-be-was

-think-thought

- Both English and

ii partial modification- Hausa languages
exhibit partial
begin-began- [i] –[a] Partial modification- modification.
Gaada-gaado/a/---/0/
mouse-mice-[au]-[ai]
Jeefa-jiifa /e/--- /i/

Backformatio Words formed via

n backformation:
-Even though English exhibits
-swindler-swindle backformation, Hausa lacks
the linguistic feature.
-moving picture-movie

-editor –edit

Blending Blended words: -Some English words are

-breakfast + lunch = brunch formed via blending but

-smoke + fog = smog Hausa could not use such

-motor + hotel = motel linguistic feature to form any

word

Borrowing I Borrowing words- alcohol i- borrowing words - - All the languages exhibit
(from Arabic), robot, pistol
(from Czench),boss (from -Ubangijii – Allah (God) borrowing as a process of
Dutch), zebra (fromBantu) –sani—ilimi (knowledge) forming words.
etc.
- bokitii (bucket)

ii-calque–
- Calque could also befound in
-loan word from lehnwort English and Hausa languages
ii- calque-
 98

-superman from ubermensch - ard + ii =lardii

(province)

-jaahil+cii=jahilcii
(ignourance)

Clipping i- front clipping– i–front clipping – - fate – -Whereas front and back
fate –fate ( a mushy food)
-airplane –plane Abubakar- Abu (a clipping could be found in
-Augustina-Tina personal name) both the languages, the

combination of the two could

ii - back clipping – be found in English alone.

ii- back clipping – -kwalwa-kwakwalwa

(brain substance )
-bra – brassiere
-juwaa-hajijuwa
- gas – gasoline (giddiness)

iii - front and back clipping

– -flu – influenza

Coinage i- invented trade names:

Kodak, Xerox, Kleenex. This feature could be

found in English but

ii- names of inventors: Hausa lacks it.

sandwich, Volt, Jumbo

iii- Brand names:

 99

Xerox, Vaseline

iv- Greek origin:

Thermometer, Acrophobia

i – noun compounds: i- noun –based i - Even though compounding

Compounding
compounds: is
walking stick, earth quake,
ilimin-kimiyya (adult found in both English and
call – girl education) mulkin- kai Hausa
(self independence) juyin
– mulki (coup d’ etet) languages, the former exhibits
ii - adjectival compounds: fewer types (three times) than
breath – taking, home-sick, the
law – abiding ii-adjectivebased-
compounds: latter(seven times)

iii - verb farar –hulaa (civilian)

compounds: gajen-hakuri ii-While each type tends to

sight see, (impatient) perform the functions their

baby – sit tsawon –rai (long life) names

represent, in English; in Hausa

iii- verb –based the emphasis is not on function

compounds: but on the core-based of the
fasa –kwabri Formation. For instance, while
(smuggling)
noun compounds perform the
girgizar–kasaa
(earthquake) functions of nouns in English,

noun-based compounds are

those
iv-adverb–based-
compounds: formed with nouns as their
core,
tsakar –gida
(compound) in Hausa.
 100

saman –bakwai (sky)

v- adverbial compounds:

yanzu–yanzu
(immediately)

nan – gaba (later)

vi-idiophone–based
compounds:

kyal-kyal-banza (good
for nothing)

Subul-da-baka (slip of
tongue)

vii-pronoun–based
compounds:

kaa–shaa–maikoo
(bridegroom)

kaa –fi –zaboo (a kind of

seasoning)

Reduplication i- complete reduplication: i- complete reduplication i- Though it seems the two

types of reduplication appear
din- din (dinner) ( cikakken nannage): in the two
shoe - shoe (shoes) (a)Idiophones: languages,
Lakakai-lakakai(slowly) complete reduplication
(b) qualification is considered formal in Hausa
compounds: but
Jaka-jaka ( in bags) highly informal in English
(c) numerical compounds:

Shida- shida (in sixes)

 101

(d) color- based

compounds:
ii-while complete
Kore-kore (greenish)
reduplication is not freely

realized in English, in
(e) pluralization:
Hausa it is commonly
Yake-yake (wars)
realized in forming several

Words.
(f) intensivazation):

Yanzu-yanzu
(immediately)

(g) detensification:

Gajere-gajere (not that iii- whereas in Hausa

short) partial reduplication is use

to show intensivization

ii- partial reduplication: ii- partial reduplication and pluralization, in

zig-zag (ragaggen nannage): English it does not show

rift – raft
Such.
tip – top

(a) CVC reduplication

intensivization: saaree (to

cut)

sassaree (to cut several

times)

- derivation of adjectival iv- whereas in Hausa

nouns:
partial reduplication is
Kaifii (sharp) – kakkaifa
 102

used to derive adjectival

(b)consonantal nouns and exclamatory

reduplication
adjectives, in English they
- pluralization:
Could not be derived.
muuguu (wicked man) -

muggaa (wicked people)

- exclamatory adjectives:

Shirgi! (What a head!)

Shirgeegee!
 103

Chapter Five

Research Findings, Summary, Recommendations and Conclusion

5.0 Introduction

This chapter consists of the research findings based on the data collated summary of the

research work, recommendations and conclusion.

5.1 The Research Findings

The major findings of the study are listed as follows:

(1) The English and Hausa languages form their words by using some processes, for

instance, affixation, acronyms, alternation, blending, borrowing, clipping,

compounding, reduplication, etc.

(2) Affixes in Hausa have counterparts in English. For example:

i. Hausa has prefixes, which could also be found in English;

ii. Hausa uses a lot of suffixes, so also does English;

iii. However, while infixes are common in Hausa, English realizes quite a few.

Furthermore, circumfixes take the reversal position, while circumfixation occurs

commonly in English. Hausa employs a little (none of it in creating words).

(3) Hausa has morphemes in its structure like most languages, such as English.

(4) Hausa employs word- formation processes just like English. For instance:

(a) Hausa uses a lot of affixation to create some words likewise English.

(b) Even though Hausa employs alternation in forming some words, it employs only one

type, i.e. the partial, while English employs both partial and complete modifications.

(c) Both English and Hausa borrow a lot of words from other languages of the world.
 104

(d) Clipping, as one of the processes of forming words, is being used to form several

English and Hausa words. However, while Hausa employs two types (front and back

clipping), English employs three (front, back and a combination of the two).

(e) Compounding is another common process of forming words in English and Hausa

languages. Here, it is discovered that both the languages use nouns, verbs, and

adjectives, etc. as their bases. Furthermore, the elements that make such compounds (in

English as well as Hausa languages) could be two or more.

(f) Even though Hausa and English employ reduplication in forming some words, it is

realized that:

(i) Complete reduplication is more common in Hausa and the derived words could be

used formally, whereas English uses complete reduplication to create words, which

are considered as highly informal.

(ii) Concerning partial reduplication, it is realized that while in English it occurs at the

initial position, in Hausa it occurs at initial, medial or even final positions.

(5) Both Hausa and English languages employ many words- formation processes,

such as coinage, backformation, borrowing / claque, etc.

(6) Some of the processes of word- formation (in this study) could be found in both

languages (e.g., affixation, alternation, borrowing, clipping, compounding and

reduplication); others are employed by alone (e.g. acronyms, back-formation,

blending, and coinage).

Even though the researcher is not unaware of the fact that the findings are limited to the

materials randomly sampled from texts, internet and native speakers’ constructions, he wishes

to posit that such findings and discussions are generalizable within the context of comparative

linguistic analysis.
 105

5.2 Summary

The work is an attempt to respond positively to the current trends of intellectualism

from the point of view of language. It is the synchronic study revealing the similarities of

genetically unrelated languages, which are contained in the linguistic structures of the

languages under study.

The Hausa and English languages were chosen to be worked upon comparatively by

implication contrastively at the morphological level. It is presumed, in this work, that the two

languages under comparison share a lot in their processes of word – formation, and it is only

through an extensive research study that such an assumption can be affirmed. The work,

therefore, investigated some processes of forming words in English and Hausa, which include:

acronyms, affixation, alternation, backformation, blending, borrowing, clipping, coinage,

compounding and reduplication. It, thus, looked at literature related to the topic, to enhance

the effectiveness of some arguments. For a comparative analysis of the word-formation

processes in English and Hausa, examples of each process in both languages were drawn. The

researcher employed the descriptive analysis method in the analysis of his data. The approach

is adopted, because, Nida emphasizes the idea that linguistic features and systems must be

descriptive as they are – that is clearly (23). Based on this assertion, data for description and

analysis were collected. So, these processes were compared in the two languages: English

and Hausa, in that similarities and differences were realized and remarks were given. From

the description, analysis and interpretation of the morphological processes in the two

languages under comparison, the researcher comes up with some findings above.
 106

5.3 Recommendations

From the study undertaken, the following recommendations are made:

All that have stake in the study of English and Hausa languages should know that these

languages are of different origins and typologies. Therefore, attention should be paid to

identifying where the differences and similarities exist.

Teachers should learn from this study and be conversant with the differences and

similarities in the word structures of the two languages. This is because the study will help the

teacher to detect where to encounter problems. If such problems are not properly outlined, the

learner is liable to commit errors in the English language.

Teachers should emphasize teaching the differences where problems are arising

using assorted prepared and improvised instructional materials and methods carefully chosen

for planning and the development of actual classroom teaching of the target language. The use

of oral drills and practices that are based on the English language word formation processes

emphasizing how to surmount the negative transfer emanating from Hausa language should be

employed.

In a similar vein, teachers should take a gradual approach in the introduction of the

different types of morphological processes based on inflection, derivation, modification,

compounding and so on. Emphasis should be paid to their internal composition and

constituents using affixes for clearer delineation of their immediate constituents.

Curriculum designers/planners, educationists and theorists, authors and textbook

writers in the English language in Hausa communities and schools should in their work reflect

clearly the differences that exist between the word structures of English and Hausa.
 107

Further researches should be done on English and Hausa morphological processes

using Error and Needs Analysis approaches to save the on-coming grammar students and

Hausa speakers of English from the problem of native language interferences.

5.4 Conclusion

Learning by definition is relatively permanent change in behaviour as a result of past

experience. It deals with the acquisition of new things and transfer of the existing habits that

are compatible with the new knowledge progressively. Therefore, this study on Comparative

Study of Morphological Processes in English and Hausa languages shows that the route to

acceptable grammatical expressions is in the formation of correct word structures. However,

this poses a lot of challenges and problems for many learners of English as a second language

as a result of multi-dimensional linguistic factors which mother tongue interference is one of

them.

It is on record that word formation types are many in English. Yet, there is a high

demand on the learners of English as a second language irrespective of his background to

make correct grammatical expressions in both written and spoken communications. With the

flexible rules governing word formation in English, a learner of English as a second language

turns to overgeneralization based on analogy and similitude to form word structure. However

this is rarely correct.

As earlier noted in the Lado’s (1957) Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, every language

has its own peculiarities, though with certain similarities. For an Hausa learner of English to

be effective in the knowledge of word formation and construction, he or she must be grounded

in the morphology of the target language which unfortunately is different from his or her

native language. The learner must as well place emphasis on the internal composition of the

word structures of the target language including their types, characteristics and functions.
 108

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