Book review

Hausa.Jaggar, Philip J. 2001 London Oriental and African Language Library vol. 7. JohnBenjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia. xxxiv, 754 pp. (ISBN 9027238073).Includes bibliographical references and index. Hardbound Euro 200, USD 200.

1. General remarks

This comprehensive reference grammar provides an informed and up-to-datetreatment of the Hausa language that meets the highest standards of descriptive andtypological linguistics alike. In covering a broad range of morphological and syn-tactic phenomena, it represents a major contribution to the field of African languagestudies in general and Chadic linguistics in particular and will be the standardreference work on Hausa syntax in the foreseeable future.

2. Background information

2.1. The Hausa language

Hausa is a major world language, spoken by an estimated 22 million nativespeakers, plus an additional 17 million second language speakers (information fromthe UCLA Hausa Home Page at http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/Hausa/indexframe.html). The largest native Hausa speaking population is in north-ern Nigeria and in the southern areas of the Republic of Niger, where Hausa repre-sents the majority language, but Hausa figures prominently as a lingua franca acrosswest Africa, rivalled only by Swahili (east/central Africa). With respect to its geneticlineage, Hausa belongs to the Western branch of Chadic family, which itself is amember of the Afroasiatic phylum that includes Semitic (e.g. Akkadian, Arabic,Hebrew), Berber (Tamazight, Turareg), Cushitic (Somali, Oromo), Omotic (Maale,Benchnon, Wolaytta), and Ancient Egyptian/Coptic.Despite the basic uniformity of Hausa wherever it is spoken, one can identify a

number of regional dialects that display some variation in phonology (includingtone), lexicon, and formatives. These dialects show some internal variation them-selves, but each has a feature or cluster of features characteristic of that variety.

Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua

doi:10.1016/S0024-3841(03)00113-X

Jaggar’s grammatical description is based on ‘Standard Hausa’, which is thelanguage variety of Hausa spoken in the Kano area and Kano City. Dialectal var-iants are included in the linguistic analysis especially when they shed light on pho-nological alternations in the shape of morphological markers.

2.2. Hausa scholarship

Hausa is (one of) the most thoroughly researched sub-Saharan African languages,and has been the subject of scholarly research dating back over 150 years (seeNewman 2000:2 for review). Recent grammars and pedagogical works on Hausainclude Cowan and Schuh (1976), Kraft and Kirk-Greene (1973), Parsons (1981),Leben et al. (1991), Jaggar (1992) and Wolff (1993), among various others. In the1980s a generative research tradition was established in the field with importantcontributions to the area of Hausa clause structure (see, in particular, Tuller, 1986).The beginning of the 21st century marks a new area of Hausa scholarship with theappearance of two major new grammars by Paul Newman and Philip Jaggar. Thetwo grammars complement each other—whilst Newman (2000) provides a broaddescriptive overview within a historical and comparative Chadic context, Jaggar(2001) has a particularly keen eye for syntactic structures and their discourse func-tion. Both grammars will be invaluable reference tools for both students andresearchers of Hausa.

2.3. The author

Dr. Philip Jaggar, Reader in Hausa and comparative (West) Chadic at the Schoolof Oriental and African Studies in London is one of the leading figures in Hausalinguistics. His oeuvre covers a broad spectrum of research topics, including suchdiverse topics as grammatical voice (Jaggar, 1988, 2001), relative clause construc-tions (Jaggar, 1998), tone (Jaggar, 1982) and topic and focus structure (Jaggar, 1978,1983; Green and Jaggar 2003). He also designed various teaching materials. Hisrecent Hausa grammar is the culmination of more than thirty years of intensivelanguage study.

3. The approach

The grammar is on the whole accessible to a general linguistic readership,although, due to constraints of space, not all examples are glossed. This does notpose particular problems for the understanding of Hausa verb morphology andphrasal syntax. Moreover, there is a selective and appropriate use of glosses in var-ious sections dealing with Hausa clause structure, which are of particular interest fortypologists and syntacticians alike. Every topic is covered in meticulous detail, andthere is a wealth of examples with careful transcription of tone and vowel length. Atpoints, however, the inclusion of ungrammatical sentence examples might have beenhelpful in illustrating and supporting the pursued line of analysis.

78 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

Although the Hausa language facts are presented in theory-neutral terms as iscommon practice in descriptive linguistics, the author is clearly familiar with recentdevelopments in theoretical linguistics. This is reflected in the structure of the pre-sentation, description and analysis. It is clear both from the organisation of thevolume and from the focus of the discussion in each chapter that the author has akeen sense of what syntacticians, typologists and functionalists will want to find outabout the language.In terms of organisation, the author follows the classical model for reference

grammars with chapters on phonology, morphology, and syntax; indeed heacknowledges the usefulness of Quirk et al. (1985) in devising a structure for thevolume. However, Jaggar diverges from more traditional grammatical descriptionsin providing a penetrating analysis of the Hausa verbal system, which succeeds incapturing the subtle distinctions in meaning between various conjugation patterns.Another innovative aspect of this grammar concerns the treatment of Hausa syntax,which pays close attention to the relation between sentence form and informationstructure.

4. Overview

The grammar consists of sixteen chapters, which together provide a completedescription of Hausa linguistic structures and functions. Each chapter is consistentin organisation (including sections on form and function, followed by examples). Itincludes thorough cross-referencing and carefully researched sections on furtherreading.

4.1. Chapter 1: Introduction

This introductory chapter presents some background information about theHausa language (number of speakers; geographic distribution), its genetic affilia-tion, and its well-established presence in the media and in the scholarly literature.It also includes a section on data sources consulted in the preparation of thevolume.

4.2. Chapter 2: Phonology

The second chapter deals with various aspects of Hausa phonology, such as thephoneme inventory, tone, and phonotactics (word and syllable structure). Hausa hasan elaborate phonemic inventory with 32 consonants including glottalised, palata-lised and labialised consonants. The vowel inventory is moderate but vowel length isphonologically contrastive. Tone has a lexical function but is of utmost importancein the morphology. Intonation has a clause-typing function and distinguishesbetween the declarative and the interrogative mood. This, however, does not precludethe co-occurrence of syntactic fronting and special inflectional morphology in wh-and focus fronting sentence constructions.

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 79

4.3. Chapter 3: Classification of nouns

The basic distinction explored in this chapter is between common nouns andproper nouns. With respect to common nouns, the basic distinction is betweenevent-denoting and entity-denoting nouns. The event-denoting nouns are licensed asnominal complements of the light-verb construction with yi ‘to do’ as well asaspectual verbs and imperfective tense-aspect-mood (tam) markers. The entitydenoting nouns involve morphosyntactic reflexes of the mass-count distinction:count nouns are compatible with specific indefinite and definite determiners, dis-tributive universal quantifier and numerals, whereas the pattern for mass nouns ismore restricted (p.33).

4.4. Chapter 4: Simple nouns and adjectives: gender and number

This chapter explores nominal morphology, focusing on grammatical gender andnominal plurality. Hausa preserves the Afroasiatic binary distinction between mas-culine and feminine nouns in the singular. The feminine gender marker is usuallyfinal -a�. Masculine gender is the unmarked default, but exceptions are extensivelydiscussed. Grammatical gender triggers different agreement inflection on adjectives,tam complex and linkage markers in complex nps. With more than forty differentplural patterns, nominal plural formation is one of the most complex areas of Hausagrammar; a variety of morphological devices are employed, comprising suffixation(mainly) or prefixation, reduplication, vowel changes and tonal alternations, or acombination of these devices.

4.5. Chapter 5: Nominal and adjectival derivation

The derivational process involves either suffixation or prefixation, whereby suffixesare tone-integrating and prefixes are not; we therefore observe an asymmetrybetween the left and the right edge of prosodic hosts. There is a detailed descriptionof the semantics of these suffixes, some aspects of which might be related to thecategory-changing process involved. Nominal compounds (ncs) consist either oftwo lexical nouns or of noun plus adverb, which together function as an indivisiblemorphosyntactic unit; they display non-compositional and sometimes idiosyncraticmeanings. Endocentric ncs are left-headed with genitival linker -n (m/pl) or -r~ (fs)attached to the head noun. These ncs display phrasal characteristics in that the headnoun determines the gender of the compound, whereas the gender of the encliticlinker and the definite determiner is usually locally determined by the rightmostdependent element.

4.6. Chapter 6: Tense, aspect, mood (tam) system

With the exception of the imperative, Hausa verbs are not inflected for tenseaspect or mood. The conjugation base or person-aspect complex (pac) is a freefunctional morpheme that occurs independently from the verb. There are 16 distinct

80 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

inflectional paradigms, with 11 for affirmative and five for negative conjugationpatterns. The pac consists of subject agreement pronoun (sap) plus tam marker,although not all pacs involve discrete morpheme boundaries. The term ‘subjectagreement pronoun’ is misleading in the sense that the pac can co-occur withnominal, pronominal and null subjects. The pac imposes selectional restrictions onits complement: the imperfective selects non-finite vps or non-verbal complement,whereas the remainder select a finite vp. A range of temporal, aspectual and modaldistinctions are expressed by pacs. Moreover, the perfect and imperfect paradigmsshow a morphological alternation between neutral and focus forms, where thelatter occur in typical exemplars of wh-constructions (relative clauses, wh-questions,declarative focus sentences; see discussion section below). The discussion of thetemporal and aspectual reference is couched in broadly Reichenbachian terms.The discussion of each paradigm includes historical and dialectal notes and isaccompanied by illustrative examples of its contextual uses.

4.7. Chapter 7: Verb grades

The Hausa verb system shows some similarity to the templatic morphology of theSemitic verb system. Primary grades 0-3 are defined on the basis of argument struc-ture syntax, for example grade 2 which shows a final vowel alternation depending onwhether its complement is direct object pronoun (-e-), nominal or clausal comple-ment (-i), indirect object (-a-/ar), or extracted object or discourse-linked null object(-a-). Each grade shows a templatic form in terms of tone and vowel length. Sec-ondary grades (4-7) are derived grades where the suffix affects the valency or thesemantics of the primary grade base form (e.g., ‘affected subject’ (including pas-sives); motion towards or away from the deictic centre). The chapter also contains asurvey of ‘pluractional’ verbs, which involve partial or full reduplication of the baseform of the verb, and express plurality of events/participants.

4.8. Chapter 8: Verbal nouns, deverbal nouns and infinitives

The author distinguishes verbal nouns (vn) and deverbal nouns (dvn) and alsodiscusses ‘infinitive phrases’. These are united by the fact that they are all the formsthat can occur after imperfective tam. The verbal noun is a non-finite form occur-ring with imperfective tam and showing grammatical gender (like common nouns, afinal -a- denotes a feminine noun form), and in subject position triggers agreement ontam or non-verbal copula. The vn also takes the genitive linker before thematicobjects. vns are further sub-divided into ‘weak vn’ (wvn) (- 0wa- forms) and ‘strongvn’. The wvn is restricted to occurring after imperfective tam and in constructionswithout an object, whereas the svn occurs in all syntactic contexts except beforeindirect objects. The dvn shows the same derivational morphology as verbal nouns,but differs syntactically by showing the same distribution as common nouns. A moreeconomical analysis might be to view vn and dvn as the same category with a rangeof functions (where the basic distinction would then be between - 0wa- vn and non-0wa- vn). The infinitive phrase consists of what Jaggar (and Newman) term ‘finite’

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 81

verb plus direct object, and occurs in non-finite contexts. This terminology is rathermisleading, since the verb is not finite (no verbs are finite in the language; this isexpressed by tam), and therefore the infinitive does not exist as a separate category.

4.9. Chapter 9: Noun phrase syntax

Hausa has a rich deictic system, most elements of which can function both asdeterminers and as pronouns. The demonstrative system is based on person-orienteddeixis (closeness to speaker/hearer), i.e. proximal vs. distal demonstratives. Thissystem also reflects the relative newness of the referent in the discourse context. Themore explicit forms precede the (often hearer-new) head noun, while the clitics fol-low the (usually hearer-old) head that is provided with the genitival linker. In pos-sessive nps the possessed noun is phrase-initial and contains the genitive linker -n(m/pl) or-r (f) which precedes the possessor np. The possessive np constructionexpresses a wide range of semantic relationships. Adjectives can be either pre-nominal or post-nominal, where the post-nominal position usually expressesemphasis or contrast.

4.10. Chapter 10: Personal non-subject pronouns

The title of this chapter reflects the fact that ‘subject pronouns’ is the traditionalterm for those occurring as part of the person-agreement complex (pac) within thetam system (treated in Chapter 6)—a rather misleading term given that a range ofthe pronouns treated within this chapter can function as subjects. The basic divisionthen within the pronoun system is between personal and non-personal, the latter notbeing marked for person but marked for gender and number and often functioningas third person nouns. This set includes demonstratives, interrogatives, specificindefinites, relatives and universals. Within the personal pronoun set (those markedfor person) the basic split is between ‘subject pronouns’ (see above) and ‘non-subjectpronouns’, the topic of this chapter. This set includes 8 subclasses (independent;do strong (free) pronouns; do weak (bound suffix) pronouns; io pronouns; freepossessive pronouns; bound (suffix) genitive pronouns; reflexives and reciprocals)each containing 8 forms (5 singular: 1s; 2ms; 2fs; 3ms; 3fs and 3 plural: 1pl; 2pl;3pl).

4.11. Chapter 11: The syntax of simplex clauses

A traditional distinction is made between five types of simplex clause: (i) verbaldeclarative; (ii) non-verbal declarative; (iii) interrogative; (iv) imperative; (v) excla-mative. The simple verbal declarative clause represents the svo word order of Hausaand consists of the following elements: (subject) pac vp. Subject and pac agree inperson, number and gender. The chapter includes a detailed section on the classifi-cation of verbs (transitive; efferential; intransitive; bivalent; copular; dative; phrasaland sociative verbs). The imperative is distinguished by (a) lacking pac and (b) themarking of imperative on the verb itself, usually by means of l-h tone. There is also

82 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

a detailed section on the negative sentence patterns, which with the exception ofimperfective and subjunctive involve the discontinuous negation markersba(a). . .ba, which involve a typologically marked double occurrence of some allo-morph of the same negative marker. The section on non-verbal sentences distin-guishes those without tam markers (equational, existential, and presentationalsentences) from those which are formed with the imperfective tam followed by non-verbal predicate (e.g. suna- kan kuje-ra- [3pl.impf on chair] ‘they are on the chair’ (p.469). Further sections discuss comparison and equivalence, indirect objects andexclamations, interjections and greetings.

4.12. Chapter 12: Focus, questions, relativization and topicalization

These phenomena are treated together as ‘syntactically parallel operations’. Focusfronting triggers the ‘focus’ form of tam, and can express both new information andexhaustive focus. In-situ focus as a marked alternative (subject to dialect variation)expresses the same range of focus types but does not trigger the focus form of tam.The author also discusses the interaction between focus and negation and surveysfocus in non-verbal sentences, pseudo-clefts, sentential focus and focus particles.The same pattern described for ex-situ/in-situ focus also holds forwh-questions, but notfor yes-no questions, where declarative word order is maintained and the question ismarked either by question intonation or by a dedicated interrogative particle. Relativeclauses also condition the focus form of tam, although some speakers allow theneutral form in non-restrictive relatives, which are also distinguished (for somespeakers) by a ll tone relative pronoun (cf. hl tone relative pronoun in restrictiverelatives). Finally, topic prominence is marked by left-dislocation of a nominalconstituent in the left periphery of the clause and, optionally, a topic-indicatingparticle. Topicalisation is distinguished from focus fronting by (i) neutral tam and(ii) the preference for resumption over gapping.

4.13. Chapter 13: Clausal complements

This chapter describes the range of clausal complement taking matrix verbs andthe properties of their clausal complements, where these are broadly divided intofinite and non-finite clauses (the latter containing verbal noun phrases or infinitivalphrases). The classification is based on Givon’s (1980) typology, wherein matrixverbs which simply report an event are ‘weak’, and those which imply or presupposethe realization of the event expressed by the complement clause are ‘strong’. Themain classification is into so-called implicative verbs (including aspectual verbs ofinitiation and termination such as fa-ra- ‘start’ and gama- ‘finish’ and manipulativeverbs including causative sa) and non-implicative verbs (including factive and non-factive verbs of cognition as well as verbs of perception and discovery). There is aninteresting discussion on the syntax of impersonal mandative adjectives and nouns(referred to as (modal) complement-taking expressions) and direct and indirectreported speech. Other topics of this chapter are extraposition and tough movement,and cognate object constructions.

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 83

4.14. Chapter 14: Clausal co-ordination and subordination

This chapter is divided into two main sections, describing co-ordination and sub-ordination. In Hausa, asyndetically linked clauses are commonly used in narrativesequences of events, but can also occur in subject depictives, describing the state ofthe subject whilst the main clause event takes place. In this case, the asyndeticallylinked clauses have a single event interpretation (e.g. Mu-sa- yana- tafiya- yana- wa-ka-

[Musa 3m.impf tavel.vn 3m.impf singing] ‘Musa was going along singing’ (p.593)).Clausal coordinators such as kuma ‘and’ and a�mma� ‘but’, on the other hand, areassociated with a multiple event reading, but may at the same time express con-trastive focus or emphasis. The section on co-ordination lists and describes ellipsisand substitution within clausal co-ordination, including a discussion of pro-forms.The second part provides a detailed survey of finite, non-finite and non-verbaladverbial clauses, where the fine-grained typology of conditional constructions,temporal subclauses, and reason and purpose clauses deserves special mention.

4.15. Chapter 15: Adverbial functions: adverb phrases, prepositional phrases, nounphrases

As we expect, the adverbial function in Hausa can be fulfilled by a heterogeneous setof categories: adverb phrases (such as kullum ‘always’), prepositional phrases (such asda gaske ‘truly’) and noun phrases (such as ma-kon jiya ‘last week’). This chapter sur-veys forms and meanings, as well as syntactic functions, and includes sections onnegation of adverbials and adverbial conjuncts and disjuncts. The chapter alsoincludes a section on the ‘modal particles’ (dai; fa; kuma; kam; kuwa/ko-; ma-), includ-ing a discussion of their semantic functions and the various positions in which theseparticles can occur within the sentence. The final section describes ideophones, a cross-categorial set of phonosemantic elements with (among others) adverbial functions.

4.16. Chapter 16: Selected texts

This chapter provides background about the written history of Hausa, from theArabic script ajami (with texts dating back to the 19th century) to the introductionof the Roman alphabet in the early 20th century. The chapter also provides a selectionof texts, two in ajami (with transliteration into Roman script, and English glossesand translation), and two modern Hausa texts with glosses and translation.

5. Discussion: Special inflection, wh-extraction, and the distinction between overt

and covert movement

Hausa may be described as a discourse-configurational language, where topic andfocus prominence involves a departure from the canonical S-V-O order. As noted inthe previous section, in wh-questions and in a range of declarative focus contexts,operator movement to the left-periphery leaves a ‘footprint’ in the form of relative

84 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

aspect marking, so called because the same type of special inflectional morphology isalso found in relative clause constructions.Taken at face value, relative aspects seem to instantiate a morphosyntactic flag-

ging device that groups together typical exemplars of operator-variable construc-tions (relative clauses, wh-questions, focus-fronting sentences) and sets them apartfrom pragmatically neutral declarative clauses. The extraction of the subject inrelative clauses, wh-interrogatives and declarative focus sentences is illustrated inexamples (1a–c). With respect to (1b) and (1c), it should be observed that despite theoptional presence of the focus copular ne-/ce-, we are dealing with monoclausal con-figurations rather than biclausal clefts (see Tuller 1986 and Green 1997 for relevantdiscussion). Further note that the presence of the optional non-verbal copular focusmarker shows that the wh-/focus subject has been moved into the left periphery. Inthe absence of the focus marker, the special inflection is the only diagnostic forsubject wh-movement. Boldface indicates focus.

(1)

a. ka- ga ba- ı-n da suka iso- yanzu? 2m.pf see guests-dd(pl) rel 3pl.foc-pf arrive now ‘Did you see the guests who just arrived?’

b. su-wa-ne- (ne-) suka tafi Amırka3pl-who fm.pl 3pl.foc-pf go America

‘Who went to America?’

c. Su Audu da Mu-sa- (ne-) suka tafi Amırka3pl Audu and Musa (fm.pl) 3pl.foc.pf go America

‘Audu and Musa went to America’

A number of languages are known to have special forms for verbs in relativeclauses, wh-questions and declarative focus contexts, some genetically related toHausa, like Coptic Egyptian (Reintges, 2002, 2003a,b), some unrelated, like Chamorroand Palauan; Western Austronesian (Chung, 1998; Georgopoulos, 1991). See Haık(1990) and Watanabe (1996) for a comparative analysis. The special inflectionalpatterns or ‘wh-agreement’ found in these languages share important properties withHausa relative aspects, such as the restriction to finite/tensed clauses and the non-localrelationship between the operator and the designated inflectional head, which is notreducible to specifier-head agreement with the C0-node (Rizzi, 1997). The Hausafacts are potentially revealing for two areas of current concern: (i) the taxonomyof operator-variable constructions and (ii) the overt vs. covert distinction ofwh-movement operations. We will address these issues in turn without attemptingto provide a definite analysis (see Green and Reintges 2003a,b for a more detaileddiscussion).

5.1. On the typology of operator-variable constructions

In the 1970s a number of superficially unrelated sentence patterns were argued tofall into a distinctive class of operator-variable constructions (see Chomsky, 1977;Browning, 1987 and much subsequent research). The evidence for the unity of the

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 85

class was, and still is, however, intrinsically indirect. First, since operator-variabledependencies are by definition derived by movement, one of the elements, the vari-able left behind in the extraction site, is always phonetically empty. While in somecases the operator is overt (wh-questions and clefts), in other cases, the operatoritself is also covert (relative clauses and comparatives). As a result, the existence ofthe operator-variable dependencies can often be established only on the basis ofsyntactic and interpretive tests. In the wake of new theoretical developments, someof these tests are no longer valid (see, for example, Nissenbaum, 2000 for a revision ofstandard diagnostics for covert movement structures in parasitic gap constructions).In registering operator-variable dependencies, Hausa relative aspects provide

clear-cut evidence for the naturalness of relative clauses, wh-questions, and declara-tive focus sentences as one class. Yet, the paradigmatic split between the ‘general’and the ‘relative’ form of the tense-aspect word raises a number of empirical andtheoretical issues that demand closer attention. First, there is a taxonomic problem:the sentence patterns flagged by relative aspect marking overlap only partially withthe class of operator-variable constructions defined in Chomsky’s (1977) originalproposal. Thus, the relative/focus perfective may be used in the antecedent clausesof open ıdan ‘if, when’ conditionals, as shown in (2a), while the relative/focusimperfective is licensed in this environment only if focus fronting has applied (Jaggar2001:609). The relative/focus perfective can also occur in both the matrix andthe subordinate clause of correlative ko- da .... sai ‘as soon as . . . then’ constructions,as seen in (2b). Moreover, it is commonly used to mark a sequence of telic events innarrative discourse (2c), a function that Jaggar attributes to its ‘semantic specificity’(see, in particular, the discussion on pp. 162–4).

(2)

a. in kin/kika kintsa- za- mu tafi if/when 2f.pf/foc-pf be ready fut 1pl go ‘If/when you’re ready, we’ll go’

b. ko- da muka fahınci ba- zai yıwu ba,as soon as 1pl.foc-pf realize neg fut.3ms be possible neg

sai

muka dangana then 1pl.foc-pf resign oneself ‘As soon as we realised it wouldn’t be possible, then we resigned ourselves’

c. . . . muka bu- e o-far mo-tar, muka yi saur��, sai wani mutum1pl.foc-pf open door.of car.dd 1pl.foc-pf do speed then sid man

ya bu- e- mın ... muka yi saur��, muka je- muka3ms.foc-pf open io.1s 1pl.foc-pf do speed 1pl.foc-pf go 1pl.foc-pf bu- e-. . . open ‘... we opened the car door and moved quickly, then some man opened (it)for me . . . and we moved quickly and went and opened (it) . . .’

For all these constructions an operator-variable analysis seems feasible, but thedetails remain to be worked out. Jaggar uses the cover term ‘focus’ to give asemantic characterisation for the environments in which relative aspects are

86 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

grammatically allowed and/or required (p. 162, footnote 5). Although thisreductionist approach is appealing from a conceptual point of view, it is not entirelyclear or obvious whether a semantic ‘focus’ analysis carries over to relative clauseconstructions, such as (1a) above, where relative aspect marking is obligatory, orconditional and temporal adjunct clauses of the kind in (2a–b) above, where it isoptional. At this juncture, it is interesting to note that relativisation has been relatedto topicalisation/thematisation by Kuno (1976) and more recently, Bresnan andMchombo (1987). The protasis clauses of open conditionals often provide pre-supposed or contextually inferable information, which may have a morphologicalreflex in the presence of topic-indicating morphology (see e.g. Haiman, 1978).Despite their broad syntactic distribution, Hausa relative aspects show some

rather striking tense and mood restrictions. Thus, the potential future and the sub-junctive are not licensed to appear in the operator-variable or ‘focus’ environmentsconsidered so far. This fact Jaggar attributes to their modal properties, describingthem as ‘semantically incompatible with focus’ (p. 185; 504). A potential problemwith this semantic account of the interaction between inflection and syntax, how-ever, is the fact that the relative/focus perfective can occur in open conditional con-structions, which express epistemic modality. We mention in passing that the futuretense paradigm of Coptic Egyptian, a genetically and typologically closely relatedAfroasiatic language, is fully compatible with relative aspect marking, althoughrelative tense-aspects are in complementary distribution with the subjunctive-con-junctive conjugation as well as infinitivals.

5.2. A surprising asymmetry

Hausa has traditionally been described as a language with a single wh-/focusfronting strategy. Jaggar (2001: 496) presents evidence from naturally occurringdiscourse which suggests that the picture is more complicated. Although mostspeakers show a strong preference for the ex-situ strategy, wh-/focus in-situ is attes-ted as a marked alternative. Consider the (non-echo) wh-in-situ question in (3a) andthe contrastive focus-in-situ sentences in (3b) below.

(3)

a. Suna- ına- yanzu? 3pl.impf where now ‘Where are they now?’ (Lit. ‘They are where now?’)

b. Q: Ka- aika- da takardar?

2m.pf send with paper.dd ‘Did you send the paper?’

A: A-’ a-, na- aika- da litta-fın ne- (ba- takardar ba)

no 1s.pf send with book.dd fm.m neg paper.dd neg

‘No, I sent the book (not the paper)’

What the data show is that variable binding by a scope-taking operator provides anecessary but not sufficient condition for special inflection: the operator must alsobe in the appropriate configuration: relative aspects must be selected in the context

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 87

of wh-/focus fronting structures, while they are excluded in the corresponding wh-/focus in-situ contexts.This distributional pattern is reminiscent of the Clause-typing Hypothesis (Cheng

1991), according to which a clause is typed as a question either by means of dedicatedinterrogative marker or by movement to a scope position. However, in view of thefact that relative aspect marking appears in both declarative and interrogative con-texts, it cannot be analysed as a clause-typing device. Neither can special inflectionsimply be a morphological reflex of the Agree without subsequent Move andMerge (Chomsky 2000), otherwise we would expect to find special inflection in allinstances of wh-/focus.

5.3. Wh-/focus in-situ as ‘hidden’ movement configurations

In a comparative study on wh-constructions in Coptic and Hausa, Green andReintges (2003a, b) present an analysis of the syntactic conditioning of specialinflection based on a copy theory of movement (Chomsky 2000). Since both strate-gies entail the same range of contextually determined interpretations and scopeproperties, both in-situ and ex-situ wh/focus are most likely syntactically derived bythe same displacement operation. Briefly, wh-/focus in situ might be viewed asinstantiating a ‘hidden’ movement configuration. Evidence for this view includes thepresence of island effects in multiple wh-questions, and the matrix scope interpreta-tion of embedded wh-in-situ. Where the strategies differ is in which member of themovement chain is spelled out. In wh-/focus fronting structures, only the highestcopy of the movement chain is pronounced, while the diametrically opposite wh-/focus in situ pattern derives from the pronunciation of the lowest copy of that chain.A question remains why both strategies are distinguishedmorphologically with respectto the presence or absence of relative aspects. Green and Reintges (2003a, b) relatethe distribution of relative aspects to a morphological economy condition, prohi-biting the co-occurrence of special inflection and the phonetically realized copywithin a cyclic domain or ‘phase’, which in Hausa is the Tense Phrase (TP).

5.4. Global economy

The presence of two wh-/focus strategies in a language like Hausa is unexpected underassumptions of global derivational economy. Although both strategies are identicalin the syntax, they have implications for the other parts of the grammar. Moreover,neither strategy is ‘altruistic’ in the sense that it prevents the derivation from crash-ing for other reasons. Neither is the pattern described here expected under assump-tions of interface economy, where more costly operations are licensed by a distinctinterpretive output (Reinhart, 1995, 1997; Chomsky, 2001). As discussed in detail byand Green and Jaggar (2003), in-situ and ex-situ focus in Hausa do not serve distinctinterpretive goals. In the absence of clear correlations between syntactic strategy andsemantic focus type, it is clear that the interpretation of focus is underdetermined bycore syntax. It is the discourse context that determines which focus interpretation isselected from the range of options provided by narrow syntax and morphology/PF.

88 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

6. Concluding remarks

The relation between language description and linguistic theory is one of mutualbenefit. The uncovering of new empirical facts about less well-known or well-studiedlanguages poses new challenges for the design of the theory. Equally, new develop-ments in theoretical linguistics not only force one to look at well-established lan-guage facts from a new perspective, but may also provide the tools for discoveringnew language facts. It is this balance between richness of descriptive detail, pene-trating analysis, and theoretical erudition that makes Phil Jaggar’s Hausa book amodel for modern reference grammars.

7. About the reviewers

Melanie Green, a lecturer in the Linguistics and English Language Department atthe University of Sussex, studied Hausa during her undergraduate and postgraduateeducation at SOAS, during which time she wrote her PhD thesis on Focus andCopular Constructions in Hausa. She specialises in descriptive grammar and theore-tical syntax, and continues to investigate aspects of Hausa syntax in her research.Chris Reintges, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leiden Center forLinguistics, is the author of Passive voice in Older Egyptian: a morpho-syntacticanalysis, The Hague and Coptic Egyptian: Sahidic dialect, Cologne, Koppe Verlag,and various articles on Ancient Egyptian and Coptic clause structure. Green andReintges share a number of common research interests in the area of comparativeAfroasiatic syntax; a current joint project investigates the syntactic conditions onspecial inflection in Hausa and Coptic Egyptian.

8. Transcription

Transcription system: a/a-=low tone; a=falling tone; high tone is unmarked. Amacron over a vowel indicates length, e.g., a- is long, a is short. , (K)=ejective;r=apical tap/roll; c and j=palato-alveolar affricates. Abbreviations: c=com-plementiser; dd=definite determiner; f=feminine; fm=focus marker; fut=future;impf=neutral imperfective; foc.impf=focus imperfective; m=masculine; neg=ne-gation; pf=neutral perfective; foc.pf=focus perfective; pl=plural; s=singular;sid=specific indefinite determiner.

References

Bresnan, Joan, Mchombo, Sam A., 1987. Topic, pronoun, and agreement in Chichewa. Language 63,

741–782.

Browning, Maggie, 1987. Null Operator Constructions. PhD dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of

Technology.

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 89

Cheng, Lisa L.-S., 1991. On the Typology of wh-Questions. PhD dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, reprinted (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics). Garland Publishing, New York/

London.

Chomsky, Noam, 1977. On wh-movement. In: Culicover, Peter W., Wasow, Thomas, Akmajian, Adrian

(Eds.), Formal Syntax. Academic Press, New York, pp. 71–132.

Chomsky, Noam, 2000. Minimalist inquiries: the framework. In: Martin, Roger, Michaels, David, Uria-

gereka, Juan (Eds.), Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honour of Howard Lasnik. MIT

Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 89–155.

Chomsky, Noam, 2001. Derivation by phase. In: Kenstowicz, Michael (Ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Lin-

guistics. Current Studies in Linguistics. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 1–52.

Chung, Sandra, 1998. The Design of Agreement: Evidence from Chamorro. The University of Chicago

Press, Chicago and London.

Cowan, J. Ronayne, Schuh, Russell G., 1976. Spoken Hausa. Spoken Language Services, Inc, Ithaca.

Georgopoulos, Carol, 1991. On A- and A’-agreement. Lingua 85, 135–169.

Givon, Talmy, 1980. The binding hierarchy and the typology of complements. Studies in Language 4 (3),

333–377.

Green, Melanie, 1997. Focus and Copular Constructions in Hausa. PhD dissertation. School of Oriental

and African Studies, London. To appear: Publications of the Philological Society. Blackwell, Oxford.

Green, Melanie, Jaggar, Philip J., 2003. Ex-situ and In-situ Focus in Hausa: syntax, semantics and dis-

course. In: Lecarme, Jacqueline (Ed.), Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II (Current Issues in Linguistic

Theory). John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 187–213.

Green, Melanie, Reintges, Chris H., 2003a (in press). Syntactic Anchoring in Hausa and Coptic wh-con-

structions. In: Simpson, Andrew (Ed.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the

Berkeley Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley: 61–72.

Green, Melanie, Reintges, Chris H., 2003b. Copy theory of movement, special inflection and the syntax-

PF interface. Paper presented at 26th GLOW Colloquium (9–13 April 2003). University of Lund

(Sweden).

Haık, Isabelle, 1990. Anaphoric, pronominal and referential INFL. Natural Language and Linguistic

Theory 8, 347–374.

Haiman, John, 1978. Conditionals are topics. Language 54, 564–589.

Jaggar, Philip J., 1978. ‘And what about. . .?’ Topicalisation in Hausa. Studies in African Linguistics 9,

69–81.

Jaggar, Philip J., 1982. Monoverbal imperative formation in Hausa: A striking case of analogical rea-

lignment. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 4, 133–156.

Jaggar, Philip J., 1983. Some dimensions of topic-NP continuity in Hausa narrative. In: Givon, Talmy

(Ed.), Topic Continuity in Discourse: a Quantitative Cross-Language Study (Typological Studies in

Language, 3). John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 365–424.

Jaggar, Philip J., 1988. Affected-subject (‘grade 7’) verbs in Hausa: what are they and where do they come

from? In: Shibatani, Masayoshi (Ed.), Passive and Voice (Typological Studies in Language 16). John

Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 387–416.

Jaggar, Philip J., 1998. Restrictive vs. non-restrictive relative clauses in Hausa: where morpho-syntax and

semantics meet. Studies in African Linguistics 27 (2), 199–238.

Jaggar, Philip J., 1992. An Advanced Hausa Reader with Grammatical Notes and Exercises. School of

Oriental and African Studies, London.

Jaggar, Philip J., 2001. Reflexives in Hausa. In: Ibriszimow, Dymitr, Leger, Rudolf, Seibert, Uwe (Eds.),

Von Aegypten zum Tschadsee; Eine linguistische Reise durch Afrika. Festschrift fur Hermann

Jungraithmayr zum 65 Geburtstag. Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, Wurzburg, pp. 213–

228.

Kraft, Charles H., Kirk-Greene, A.H.M., 1973. Hausa. (Teach Yourself Books). Hodder and Stoughton,

London.

Kuno, Susumo, 1976. Subject, Theme, and the Speaker’s Empathy—A Reexamination of Relativization

Phenomena. In: Li, Charles N. (Ed.), Subject and Topic. Academic Press, New York and London, pp.

417–444.

90 Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91

Leben, William R., et al., 1991. Hausar Yau da Kullum [Everyday Hausa]: Intermediate and Advanced

Lessons in Hausa Language and Culture. Center for the Study of Language and Information for the

Stanford Linguistics Association, Stanford.

Newman, Paul, 2000. The Hausa Language: An Encyclopedic Reference Grammar. Yale University

Press, New Haven and London.

Nissenbaum, Jonathan, 2000. Investigations of covert phrase movement. PhD dissertation. Massachusetts

Institute of Technology.

Parsons, F.W., 1981. In: Furniss, Graham (Ed.), Writings on Hausa Grammar: The Collected Papers of

F.W. Parsons. UMI Books on Demand, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, Svartvik, Yan, 1985. A Comprehensive Gram-

mar of the English Language. Longman, London.

Reinhart, Tanya, 1995. Interface Strategies. OTS Working Papers, University of Utrecht.

Reinhart, Tanya, 1997. Interface economy: focus and markedness. In: Wilder, Chris., Gaertner, H.M.,

Bierwisch, M. (Eds.), The Role of Economy Principles in Linguistic Theory. Akademic Verlag, Berlin,

pp. 146–169.

Reintges, Chris H., 2002. A configurational approach to Coptic second tenses. Lingua Aegyptia Journal

of Egyptian Language Studies 10, 343–388.

Reintges, Chris H., 2003a. Syntactic Conditions on Special Inflection in Coptic Interrogatives. In:

Lecarme, Jacqueline (Ed.), Research in Afroasiatic grammar II (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory).

John Benjamins, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia.

Reintges, Chris H., 2003b (in press). Coptic Egyptian: Sahidic dialect. Afrikanistische Studienbucher.

Koppe Verlag, Cologne.

Rizzi, Luigi, 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In: Haegeman, Liliane (Ed.), Elements of

Grammar: Handbook in Generative Syntax. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 281–337.

Tuller, Laurice, 1986. Bijective relations in Universal Grammar and the syntax of Hausa. PhD disserta-

tion, UCLA.

Watanabe, Aikira, 1996. Case Absorption and Wh-Agreement. Kluwer, Dordrecht.

Ekkehard, Wolff H., 1993. Referenzgrammatik des Hausa. Hamburger Beitrage zur Afrikanistik 2. LIT,

Munster and Hamburg.

Melanie GreenUniversity of Sussex, UK

Chris H. ReintgesULCL, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Book review / Lingua 114 (2004) 77–91 91