NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI

FACULTY OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTIC
COURSE CODE: LLL224
COURSE TITLE: INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX II

ASSIGNMENT QUESTION
Account for the specific principle in the use of Adjective in your language.

REGISTRATION NO.: NSU/ART/LLL/1023/18/19

NAME: Angbashim Stephen D.

COURSE LECTURER:
Mr. Samuel Nuhu Baba

SUBMITTED ON
4th June, 2021

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INTRODUCTION
Adjective comes from Latin nōmen adjectīvum, which literally means 'additional
noun'. In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were
inflected for gender, number, and case like nouns (a process called declension), they
were considered a type of noun. The words that are today typically called nouns were
then called substantive nouns (nōmen substantīvum). The terms noun substantive and
noun adjective were formerly used in English but are now obsolete.
In linguistics, an adjective is a word that modifies a noun or noun phrase or
describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Example of Adjective include: Beautiful, short, hot, cold, cute, rich, poor, small,
handsome, corny, loyal, etc.
Traditionally, adjectives have been considered one of the main parts of speech of
the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns.
Certain words that usually had been classified as be adjectives, including the, this,
my, etc., are today typically classed separately, as determiners.
TYPES OF ADJECTIVES
Prepositive Adjectives: This adjective is also known as "attributive adjectives". It
occurs on an antecedent basis within a noun phrase. For example: "I bought the blue
car," wherein Blue occurs on an antecedent basis within The blue car noun phrase,
and therefore functions in a prepositive adjective.

Postpositive adjectives: This can occur after the verb in a sentence, taking the object
position in the sentence. E.g. The house is beautiful

Nominalized adjectives: This functions as nouns. One way this happens is by

eliding a noun from an adjective-noun noun phrase, whose remnant thus is a
nominalization. In the sentence, "The old die easily”, where the old" means "Old
people". In such cases, the adjective may function as a mass noun (as in the
preceding example). In English, it may also function as a plural count noun denoting
a collective group, as in "The gentle shall benefit", where "the gentle" means "those
who are gentle" or "all who are gentle".
LANGUAGE UNDERSTUDY: Hausa
Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken
language within the Chadic branch of that family. Ethnologues estimated that it was
spoken as a first language by some 47 million people and as a second language by
another 25 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 72
million. According to more recent estimations, Hausa would be spoken by 100–150
million people.
LANGUAGE FAMILY
Afro - Asiatic
 Chadic
 West Chadic
 Hausa
HAUSA ADJECTIVES
Syntactical Analysis of Hausa Adjectives
Hausa language has a pre and post nominal adjective, which means that their
adjective could occur before and after the noun in a sentence.
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e.g.
- Kyakkyawa yarinyan ta shigo
- Yarinya kyakkyawan ta shigo
EXAMPLE OF HAUSA ADJECTIVES
ADJECTIVE PARSING SENTENCE
Náúyí + Weight - Jàkán nà dè náúyí
Heavy - Agentive - The bag is heavy
- Light
- Inanimate

Tsámí + Taste - Gíyàn tá yí tsámí

Soar - Inanimate - The bear is soared
- Agentive

Ílìmí ± Animate - Yáròn nà dá ílìmí

Intelligence + Neuter - The boy is brilliant
- Dull

Gúrgù ± Animate - Hauwa gúrgù cè

Crippled + Neuter - Hauwa is crippled
+ Disabled

- Usman bárdé ne
- Usman is
REFERENCES
 Bauer, L. (1988). Introducing Linguistics Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
 Abubakar, A. (2001). An Introductory Hausa Morphology. Maiduguri: University Of
Maiduguri.

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