Current research projects

1. Relative marking in Hausa and other African languages

In the literature on African languages, the relative marking refers to alternative forms of some tense/aspects paradigms that are used in certain constructions instead of the ordinary forms. The contexts most frequently associated with the relative marking in African languages are the relative clauses, the out-of-focus clauses of focalized and wh-questions constructions, and the main clauses of narrative sequences. The purpose of this project, started in 2003-2004 at the Center for Grammar, Cognition and Typology (Antwerp, Belgium), is to explore all aspects of the relative marking and this in the most exhaustive way possible.

During the last four years, some very important results were obtained and publications were made about the following aspects of the relative marking: (1) the origin and distribution of the relative marking forms, (2) the function of the relative marking in focused clauses, (3) the semantic differences between the relative forms and their corresponding ordinary forms, (4) the function of the relative marking in discourse background (or scene-setting) clauses, (5) the development of the simple past from the relative perfective. Related studies were also published, in particular on the structure of narrative sequences and the two types of temporal clauses in Hausa. On the theoretical level, this project tested and extended the grammaticalization theory, which proved very effective accounting for the data.

This project will nonetheless continue for Hausa, in particular with the examination of the “relative” copulas and the function of the relative marking in relative clauses. The generalizations obtained with the study of Hausa will then be applied to other languages, in particular Fula and other languages of West Africa concerned by the phenomenon.

2. Zarma Chiine syntax

The second current major axis of research is the project on the syntax of Zarma Chiine (a language of the Songhay family spoken in the west of Niger). Zarma Chiine is numerically the second language of Niger (spoken by more than a quarter of the population) and is used in the media and the bilingual elementary schools. Nonetheless, many aspects of its syntax are little-studied. Initially, the project, with the collaboration of colleagues and students in the Department of Linguistics, will focus on some selected aspects of the syntax with a primarily descriptive interest.

For example, one publication has concerned the ditransitive constructions. Other topics include the form and the function of the singular definite marker and its dialectal variation, the relative clause, the tense/aspects paradigms and their semantics, and the syntactic order. In the long term, it is envisaged to use grammaticalization theory to get a fuller understanding of the language. The project also will use the method of contrastive linguistics, in particular by comparing the features of Zarma Chiine with those of other Niger languages with an areal perspective.

3. Transliteration and translation of Hausa Ajami manuscripts

Ajami manuscripts are documents where Arabic characters are adapted and used to transcribe a language other than Arabic. Since the introduction of Islam in Africa, a written literature has in this way developed in many African languages. The Institut de Recherche en Sciences Humaines (IRSH) of the Abdou Moumouni University has over the years built a vast repository of theses manuscripts collected all around the country. The project “Manuscrits ajami en hausa : Romanisation, traduction en français et en anglais et analyses” began in February 2008 after I received a subsidy from the Abdou Moumouni University, Niamey. For this project, five Ajami manuscripts were selected to be transcribed in Roman alphabet, translated into French and English and then analyzed from under various perspectives (depending on the specialization of fellow researchers).

The team of the project, made up of myself and Dr. Souley Bara (Department of Linguistics) has transcribed three of the manuscripts. Moreover, one publication was made concerning the linguistic aspects of one of the manuscripts from a linguistic poin of view (correspondence between the Arabic characters used and the sounds of Hausa, discourse genre, etc.)

This project was undertaken not only to restore the prestige of the cultural heritage of Niger, but also because, from our point of view, the manuscripts constitute a priceless source of data on the languages of Niger. Indeed, in the long term, the results of the study of the Ajami manuscripts, especially the oldest documents, may be of help in historical studies of African languages.

(Check here later for a download of the transliteration and the French translation of the manuscript “Mahzûratu-l-sâ’at” (“the Apocalypse”).)

4. Other research interests

Uses of basic comitative adpositions in Niger languages from a grammaticalization perspective.

Dialect studies in Hausa and Zarma Chiine (part of a departmental project)

Narrative and other sequential structures in Hausa

Hausa deictic adverbs and their derived uses

Oral literature in Hausa (part of a multidisciplinary project on oral literatures in West African languages)