Morphological productivity in English and hausa language

Abstract EN

This paper examines morphological productivity in English and Hausa languages with the aim of investigating the areas of parity and disparity between the two languages and the strength of the productivity in some processes.

The basic linguistic unit, which both languages possess, that develops into a larger unit and produces meaningful utterances in communication is word.

These words are universally present in all languages but with uniqueness and peculiarities in their use, structure and formation.

English and Hausa languages are two different languages according to language family, yet share some linguistic properties, among which morphological productivity.

While English is Indo-European, Hausa is a Chadic language, from Afro-Asiatic Family.

The study therefore attempts to pay attention on the most important morphological processes in both languages, citing examples from previous literatures.

The results show that the languages have some processes in common with recorded differences in some.

KEY WORDS: morphological productivity, linguistic unit, language family, morphological processes.