Agentive Nouns and Derived Verbs in Hausa

AGENTIVE NOUNS AND DERIVED VERBS IN HAUSA Russell G. Schuh Linguistics 105 Sample Paper 1. Background on the Hausa Language Hausa is a language of the Chadic family, one of the branches of the Afroasiatic phylum, which also includes the Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic families as well as the Egyptian language. Hausa is the first language of perhaps 30 million people in northern Nigeria and southern Niger, but it is spoken as a second language by virtually everyone in the northern half of Nigeria and all of Niger. And because the Hausas have had a dual calling as traders and purveyors of Islam, there are large Hausa communities in every city in West Africa, and Hausa serves as a lingua franca among Muslim communities in northern Ghana, Togo, and contiguous areas. This paper will explore two morphological processes in Hausa and their interaction. The first process is formation of agentive nouns from verbs, as in bug ‘beat’