MODIFIER PLACEMENT IN ENGLISH AND FULFULDE LANGUAGES

Abstract

The aim of this study is modifier placement in English and Fulfulde languages. The dissertation owes its motivation to the fact that comparative syntax is necessarily involves work on more than one language. It attempts to characterize and delineate the parameters that ultimately underlie cross-linguistic differences in Syntax. Even though, the present study is simply a descriptive one, yet it serves significant resource and input to descriptive analysis. This work explores modification in English and Fulfulde, putting into cognizance their distribution, forms and functions and their syntactic properties and position they occupy in the languages. This study obtained its data from primary and secondary sources. The primary source was of self introspection which was indispensable owing to the fact that the researcher is a native speaker of Fulfulde and the secondary source made use of materials drawn from existing documents. This study reveals; Fulfulde nominal modifications do not occur in pre-position but the Adjectives in the language do occur. However, English nominal modifications do not occur in the attributive position but the Adjectives in the language do occur in both predicative and attributive position. They always follow the Head Noun they modify and exhibit an agreement property in both languages.