A REVIEW OF PLURAL FORMATION ON FULFULDE NOUNS

Mustapha Abubakar, Salihu Hammandikko

Abstract


Fulfulde belongs to Atlantic Congo sub-family under the Niger-Congo family, of the Niger-Kordofanian Phylum. The language is non-tonal but stress with rich nominal class and is gender less. This article focuses on how Fulfulde form its plurals of nouns. The article also discusses briefly on the history of the Fulƃe, Fulfulde nominal class suffixes and initial consonant alternation. The article further highlights how plurals and singulars are formed in Fulfulde and also observes the classes of singulars and plurals of noun classes, with examples in Fulfulde, twenty one (21) singular classes and four (4) plurals classes with relevant examples from personal, diminutive, argumentative, and non-personal classes. Some singular and plural of nouns change from the initial position of the words and the remaining changes came from the suffixes of the words. Observations were made that no plural classes of (ɗam) and (kal) because they belong to the classes of liquid and uncountable nouns.

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