Hausa

Cover image
Philip J. Jaggar
SOAS

London Oriental and African Language Library 7

2001. xxxiv, 754 pp.
Publishing status: Available

HardboundIn stock
978 90 272 3807 8 / EUR 200.00
978 1 58811 030 5 / USD 300.00

Hausa is a major world language, spoken as a mother tongue by more than 30 million people in northern Nigeria and southern parts of Niger, in addition to diaspora communities of traders, Muslim scholars and immigrants in urban areas of West Africa, e.g. southern Nigeria, Ghana, and Togo, and the Blue Nile province of the Sudan. It is also widely spoken as a second language and has expanded rapidly as a lingua franca. Hausa is a member of the Chadic language family which, together with Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic, Berber and Ancient Egyptian, is a coordinate branch of the Afroasiatic phylum. This comprehensive reference grammar consists of sixteen chapters which together provide a detailed and up-to-date description of the core structural properties of the language in theory-neutral terms, thus guaranteeing its on-going accessibility to researchers in linguistic typology and universals.


Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company, www.benjamins.com/jbp.


Table of contents

List of Tables and Figures
xxv
Preface
xxvii
Cross-Referencing, Abbreviations, Symbols and Transcription
xxix
Map
xxxiv
1. Introduction
1
2. Phonology
5
3. Classification of Nouns
30
4. Simple Nouns and Adjectives: Gender and Number
48
5. Nominal and Adjectival Derivation
91
6. Tense, Aspect, Mood (TAM) System
148
7. Verb Grades
212
8. Verbal Nouns, Deverbal Nouns and Infinitives
285
9. Noun Phrase Syntax
310
10. Personal Non-Subject Pronouns
401
11. The Syntax of Simplex Clauses
414
12. Focus, Questions, Relativization and topicalization
493
13. Clausal Complements
545
14. Clausal Coordination and Subordination
592
15. Adverbial Functions: Adverb Phrases, Prepositional Phrases, Noun Phrases
643
16. Selected Texts
698
References
715
Index
740


Philip Jaggar's Hausa provides students and scholars with a comprehensive, well organized, and elegant analysis of the language. [...] Philip Jaggar's Hausa is an invaluable reference for Hausa scholars and students. [...] An especially exciting aspect of the book is that the examples do not simply illuminate a grammatical point, but reveal the vitality of the Hausa language.
Linda Hunter, University of Wisconsin-Madison in International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 35-2/3, 2002

It should be easily readable to all those interested in linguistics through the content of many glossed examples as well as through the usage of pan-linguistics terms. The wealth of modern Hausa language data, comprehensive and detailed discussion of grammatical issues (with particular noteworthy chapters concerning the casual syntax and focalization) should also attract the attention of those who are teaching or studying Hausa.
Izabela Will in Studies of the Department of African Languages and Cultures Vol. 32, 2003

It requires specific talents not only to know so much about a given language, but also to be able to arrive at a synthesis, rather than getting lost in nitty-gritty details. In this sense, Jagger's magnum opus, the result of several years of hard work, is indeed a masterpiece. With his contribution, the author has set a new hallmark in the tradition of Hausa scholarship at SOAS.
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, in School of Oriental & African Studies, Vol. 67:1 (2004)

This comprehensive reference grammar provides an informed and up-to-date treatment of the Hausa language that meets the highest standards of descriptive and typological linguistics alike. In covering a broad range of morphological and syntactic phenomena, it represents a major contribution to the field of African language studies in general and Chadic linguistics in particular and will be the standard reference work on Hausa syntax in the foreseeable future. [...] It is the balance between richness of descriptive details, penetrating analysis, and theoretical erudition that makes Phil Jaggar's Hausa book a model for modern reference grammars.
Melanie Green, University of Sussex, UK and Chris H. Reintges, ULCL, Leiden University, The Netherlands, in Lingua, Vol. 114 (2004)


Subject classification

Linguistics
Afro-Asiatic languages
Syntax