NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI

FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS
LLL214 (INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX)

QUESTION:
Explain in Details O’Grady’s definition of Syntax, provide
illuminating data from a natural language to support your
answer

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

NAME: Angbashim Stephen D.

COURSE LECTURER:
Mr. Samuel Nuhu Baba

SUBMITTED ON
1st November, 2021
INTRODUCTION
Not much can be said in any language with a single word. If we are to
use language to express complex thoughts and ideas, we must be able to
combine and organize words into sentences. Not just any combination of
words will do, take the following for instance:
i. House painted student a the
ii. A student painted the house
The above clearly shown that the example in example (i) is not
permissible, even though the same words are combined in a different way to
form an acceptable sentence in example (ii).
An utterance is said to be grammatical if rules guiding the formation of
sentences in a given language are well adhered to; and from the above
example, the first example have words randomly placed, while the second
example placed words base on rules governing the formation of sentences in
English language.
From the above examples, it is seen that every sentence is made up of words
that are taken off lexical categories; and are placed to interrelate so as to
give a higher meaning.
CATEGORIES AND STRUCTURES
A fundamental fact about words in all human languages is that they can
be grouped together into a relatively small number of classes, called
syntactic categories. This classification reflects a variety of factors including
the type of meaning the word expresses, the type of affixes they take and the
type of structures in which they can occur.
WORD LEVEL CATEGORIES
The four most studied syntactic categories are noun (N), verb (V),
adjective (A) and preposition (P). These elements, which often are called
lexical categories, play a very important role in sentence formation.

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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
SENTENCE STRUCTURE
Generally, a sentence is made up of two basic components, which are
The Subject and Predicate (Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase, respectively);
and just like English, Hausa adheres to the Universal Sentence Structure,
which is the SVO, except that it has a different way of arranging lexical
elements in the two constituents in the sentence
The Subject/Nominal Phrase/Noun Phrase
This part of the sentence covers everything about the performer of the
action or the talked about person in the sentence; and is represented in
Hausa language as thus:
Pre Modifier Noun Post-Modifier
i. Specifier (More like the i. Basically the i. Quantifier (Shows
English Determiner): name of a person, number or quantity of
Wani, Wata, Wasu, etc animal, place, the noun): Daya, Dari,
ii. Demunitive (Shows the things, idea, etc
littleness in quantity of the concept, and even ii. Adjective (Describes
Noun): Dan the Head Noun):
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iii. Adjective (Describes the subject matter Kato, Karemi,
Head Noun): Kato, ii. Compound Nouns Kyakkyawa, etc.
Karemi, Kyakkyawa, etc.
Unlike English language, the Hausa Noun Phrase/Subject has
Adjective and Quantifiers as post-modifiers, whereas in English language,
only the Prepositional phrase comes after the Head word in the Noun phrase
structure.
The Predicate/Verb Phrase
This part of the sentence shows or tell things about the Subject, from
his/her actions down to the bearer/sufferer of this action. It has the following
form of arrangement in Hausa language.
Preverbal Tense Marker Verb Noun Phrase
Pronoun
This include Includes The actions in The object in the
words like Ni, Na – Present the Sentence, sentence
Su, Mu, Ta, Ya tense eg.
and Ku Za – Future Karantawa
tense Karanta
Kan – Habitual Barci
Ke – Present Ci, etc.
continuous, etc

EXAMPLES OF SENTENCES IN HAUSA

1. Kykkyawa Yarinyan ta ke karatu
Lexical Meaning: Kykkyawa Yarinyan ta ke karatu
Adj Noun PP TM V
Beautiful Girl She is Reading
Surface Meaning: The beautiful girl is reading
2. Wasu mallamai su na zuwa makaranta
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 Lexical Meaning: Wasu mallamai su na zuwa makaranta
Adj Noun PP TM V NP
Some Teachers they are Coming School
Surface Meaning: Some teachers are coming to school

3. Wani Dan-Sanda ya kan zo gida

Lexical Meaning: Wani Dan-Sanda ya kan zo gidan
Adj Noun PP TM V NP
A Policeman he always Come The House
Surface Meaning: A policeman comes to the house
4. Adamu za ya zo gobe
Lexical Meaning: Adamu za ya zo makaranta
Noun TM PP V NP
Adamu will he come school
Surface Meaning: Adamu will come to school
5. Dallibai su ke karanta littafin
Lexical Meaning: Yaran su ke karanta littafin
Noun PP TM V NP
The children they are read The book
Surface Meaning: The children are reading the book
6. Gidajen sun a rushewa
Lexical Meaning: Gidajen su na rushewa
Noun PP TM V
The houses they are demolishing
Surface Meaning: They houses are demolishing
7. Amina za ta siya abinci
Lexical Meaning: Amina za ta siya abincin
Noun TM PP V NP
Amina will she buy the food

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 Surface Meaning: Amina will buy the food
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, all languages of the world are guided by structural rules,
guiding the formation of sentences; which if not adhered to, gives birth to
ungrammatical utterances/sentences. Just as it is in English language and
Hausa language, every language have a primary meaning to every word; but
then in the case of sentence, meanings are derived from different meaningful
words put together to convey meaning.
REFERENCES
 NSUK Texts, by Prof. Gideon S. Omachonu
 Jackendoff, Ray. (2002). Foundations of Language. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press. Kao,
 Linguistic Inquiry 9: 427-73. Fodor, Janet Dean. (1989). ‘Empty
Categories in Sentence Processing’, Language and Cognitive
Processes 4: 155-209

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