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In the name of Allah

By Ahmed Sosal A. 06-420

Supervisor: Dr. Fatima Idris

University of Khartoum

Faculty of Arts

Department of Linguistics

2012

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1. Introduction

The Fulani people call themselves Fulɓe (singular Pullo), and refer to their

language variously as Pulaar in Senegal, Pular in Guinea, and the most used one is

Fulfulde in Mali and eastwards, which is going to be used in this paper. The common

denominator of the name is the stem Ful-/Pul- (Arnott 1970:3). Primarily cattle herding,

Fu1be number have been estimated to be between 13 and 17 million (Breedveld

2006:430). They occur all across the Savannah areas of West Africa (see appendix 1)

(Mcintosh 1984:1).

According to Huber et. al (2011), Fulfulde fits within the following classification:

Niger-Congo, West Atlantic, northern branch, Senegambian group (p.2). Arnott (1970:3)

reports that there are about six dialect areas: Fuuta Tooro (Senegal), Fuuta Jalon

(Guinea), Maasina (Mali), Sokoto and western Niger, `Central' northern Nigeria, and

Adamawa. All Fulfulde dialects are mutually intelligible. Thus the current study which is

based on two Fulfulde speakers’ knowledge about their language will be mostly based on

the mutually intelligible language of most Fulani people, because still none of these

dialects has been specified as the standard Fulfulde variety.

Fulfulde has been subject to many studies for more than a century. Some of these

early studies are Klingenheben (1963 and 1952), Taylor (1921) in grammar, and Arnott

(1970) in morphology. Therefore it is possible to do a contrastive study, i.e. a study of the

linguistic differences, between Fulfulde and another language. This field has not been

investigated with regard to Fulfulde previously. This paper’s main concern will be the

linguistic contrasts between Fulfulde and English in the fields of phonology, morphology,

grammar and semantics. During the 1960s many contrastive analysis studies of English

and other languages were published and helped in producing many useful teaching

courses (James 1980:I). This study can offer a lot to translation between the two

languages under investigation, to Fulfulde language description and teaching, and to the

study of typology. The Fulfulde language is written in both Arabic and Latin script. In

both scripts, special conventions exist for writing lengths of vowels and consonants and

for writing the prenasalized and laryngealized consonants (Breedveld 2006:430). The

orthography used in this paper is following the Fulfulde language orthography of 1966

UNESCO meeting for the ‘Unification of Alphabets of the National Languages’

(Breedveld 2006:430).

2. Method

The data, analysed in this paper, has been collected mainly from two Fulfulde

speakers (see appendix 2), who speak Adamawa and Sokoto dialects, in addition to the

author’s knowledge about the language. The author’s mother is a Fulani speaker and she

uses the language at home. Furthermore, the author lived with Fulani people for some

time and, although he does not usually speaks the language; he understands it well and

can check some of the collected data. Also there is information obtained from the

references and through internet search. This method is qualitative and it gives authentic

information (especially about Fulfulde) by using these various sources.

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3. Phonology Table1: Consonant inventory1: (English consonants are from Yule (2006:34))

bilabial labiodental dental labiovelar alveolar palatal velar glottal

stops P b

P b

t d

t d

k ɡ

k ɡ

ʔ

fricatives f

f v

θ ð

s

s z

ʃ

ʃ ʒ

affricates tʃ (c) dʒ (j)

tʃ dʒ

nasal stops m

m

n

n

ɲ(ny) ŋ

ŋ

prenasalized

stops

nb nd ŋɡ

laterals l

l,r

trill r approximants w

w

j(y)

j

h

h laryngealized

stops ɓ ɗ

Table2: Vowels inventory2: (English vowels are from Yule (2006:38))

Front Central Back

High i i

u u

ɪ ə ʊ Mid e o ɛ

ɛ ʌ

ɔ ɔ

Low æ

a

a

1 In Table 1 the above consonants are Fulfulde consonants and the ones below them are the English consonants. The first phoneme on

the left is voiceless, whereas the one on the right is voiced. 2 In Table 2 the underlined vowels are Fulfulde vowels and the rest are the English vowels.

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3.1. Some examples of the Fulfulde phonemes and their distributional constraints

In the following paragraphs there is representation for each of the previous

phonemes of Fulfulde language organized in sections according to their manner and place

of articulation. In addition there is an explanation for the distributional restriction of these

phonemes. English phonemes are not represented with extensive example because

English is well known in contrast to Fulfulde. Thus the focus will be on the phonological

contrasts between the two languages with special attention on Fulfulde for the sake of

more understanding of the language to arrive at full contrastive picture.

3.1.1. The stop sounds

Within this sub-set of consonants the prenazsalized /mb/, /nd/ and /nɡ/ and the

laryngealized stops /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ are not found in English.

3.1.1.1. The glottal stop /ʔ/ does not occur syllable-finally, but precedes all the

five vowels in syllable initial position (Swift 1965:17): do’ii [dɔʔii] ‘fallen down’ ’awii [ʔawi:] ‘harvested’ be’i[bɛʔi] ‘goats’ 3.1.1.2. The voiced bilabial stops /b/, /ɓ/ and /mb/3:

Phonemes Examples meanings

/b/ / ɓ/ /mb/

baaba [baːba] ɓandu [ɓandu] mbeewa[mbɛːwa]

‘father’

‘body’

‘goat’

These phonemes occur in initial and medial position, but not in final position in

Fulfulde. In English /b/ can occur in the final position (e.g., club) and all the other

positions. 3.1.1.3. The voiced alveolar and velar stops /d/, /ɗ/, /nd/, /ɡ/, /ŋɡ/:

Phonemes Examples meanings

/d/ /ɗ/ /nd/ /ɡ/ /ŋɡ/

debo [debɔ] ɗiɗi [ɗiɗi] nder [ndɛr] goto [ɡɔtɔ] lingu [liŋɡu]

‘woman’

‘two’

‘inside’

‘one person’

‘fish’

The phonemes /-nd/,/-ɗ/ and /-ŋɡ/ do not occur in final position in Fulfulde

“The prenasalized stops occur initially in a syllable, but not finally” (Stennes 1967ː10).

/ɗ/, /nd/ and /ŋɡ/ are not found in English and /d/ and /ɡ/ can occur in every position

including the final position, e.g., send and fog.

3 In the medial position the prenasalized stop /mb/ does not behave as a unit but as two consonants belonging to two

separate syllables.

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3.1.1.4. The voiceless stops: the bilabial /p/, alveolar /t/ and velar /k/.

Phonemes Examples meanings

/p/ /t/ /k/

sappo [sapːɔ] tati [tati] hakiilo [hakiːlɔ]

‘ten’

‘three’

‘mind’

3.1.1.5. The voiced nasal labial /m/, alveolar /n/, palatal /ɲ/ and velar /ŋ/stops:

Phonemes Examples meanings

/m/ /n/ /ɲ/ /ŋ/

mawɗo [mawɗɔ] nebam [nɛbam] nyamdu [ɲamdu] kanko [kaŋkɔ]

‘big one’

‘oil’

‘food’

‘his, her’

/m/ and /n/ occur finally (e.g., jam [dʒam] ‘fine’ and aan [aːn] ‘you’, whereas the

phonemes /ɲ/ and /ŋ/ do not occur in final position in Fulfulde.

Finally, most of the stops can occur in all positions except word finally. However,

all voiced stops do occur finally in imperatives and in the shortened form of the verb

under special conditions. Voiceless stops occur word finally in ideophones (Stennes

1967:9).

3.1.2. The voiceless fricative sounds4: bilabial /f/, alveolar /s/and palatal fricative /ʃ/. Phonemes Examples meanings

/f/ /s/ /ʃ/

yafu [jafu] jesso [jeːsɔ] shaka [ʃaka]

‘forgive’

‘face’

‘middle’

The bilabial fricative/f/ occurs finally only in borrowed words (Stennes 1967ː9).

3.1.3. The voiceless palatal affricates /tʃ/ and the voiced /dʒ/:

Phonemes Examples meanings

/tʃ/ /dʒ/

bacci [batʃi] biriji [biridʒi]

‘children’

‘bean’

In Fulfulde the affricates do not occur finally (Stennes 1967ː7).

3.1.4. The approximants: the voiced bilabial approximants /w/, palatal /j/ and the

voiceless glottal /h/: Phonemes Examples meanings

/w/ /j/

rewbe [rɛwɓɛ] maayo [maːjɔ]

‘women’ ‘river’

‘talk’

4 /z/ sound is used by some speakers in loan words (Stennes 1967ː9), e.g., zura from Arabic al-zuhr ‘noon’.

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/h/ hala [hala]

The voiced bilabial glide /w/ occurs medially and finally (e.g., daw [daw] ‘on’).

On the other hand, /j/ and /h/ do not occur finally. 3.1.5. The voiced lateral /l/: Such as in lumo [lumɔ] ‘market’ , ɗilu [ɗilu] ‘goǃ’ and

baccel [batʃːɛl] ‘little boy’.

3.1.6. The voiced trill /r/: this one differs from the English flap /r/ in ring, it is a trill in

Fulfulde /r/ such as in reeɗu [rɛːɗu] ‘abdomen’, hoore [hɔːrɛ] ‘head’. It is witnessed in

final position.

3.2. Allophones

Some speakers of certain dialects rather pronounce [tʃ] as [s] or [ʃ]. The

difference in pronunciation (especially in the allophones) is mainly a dialect variation.

Whereas, in English this not basically due to dialect variations but is a result of historical

development and other linguistic factors (Huber et. al 2011:7).

Such as in the following words:

ba- -tʃ- -i [batʃi] [baʃi] or [basi] = ‘children’

ɗa- -ʃ- -ɛ [ɗatʃɛ] [ɗaʃɛ] or [ɗasɛ] = ‘gum’

-s-

d-

nd-

These allophones are probably found across most of Fulfulde dialects at least this

is true about Adamawa, Sokoto and Maasina dialects. In addition Fulfulde is rich of

allophones when we contrast it to English.

In Fulfulde / tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are realized as allophones but as phonemes in English.

Furthermore, English the dental stop /t/ can be pronounce as simple unaspirated /t/ in

word such as ‘punter’ /pʌntər/ or as aspirated /th/ /pʌnthər/. In Fulfulde this phoneme is

always unaspirated, e.g. yota /jɔta/ ‘wellcome’ fota /fɔta/ etc.

3.3. Possible sound clusters

The following syllable types are found in Fulfulde: CV (-ma ‘your’), CVC (tan

‘only) and rarely VCC (enn ‘you pl.’). Usually syllables with a long vowel do not end

with a consonant in some dialects (Huber et al 2011:10). The dominant syllable structure

is CV structure which shows that, as opposed to English, Fulfulde does not have many

consonants clusters.

Some of the possible clusters are:

Alveolar trill /r/ + voiced bilabial stop /b/ worbe [wɔrbɛ] ‘men’

Alveolar trill /r/ + alveolar stop /t/ wartii [wartiː] ‘came’

-ɛr [dɛr] or [ndɛr] = ‘inside’

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Approximate bilabial /w/ + alveolar prenasalized stop /ɗ/ mawɗo

[mawɗɔ] ‘big’

Velar nasal stop /ŋ/ + velar stop /k/ hanko [haŋkɔ] ‘he, she’

The prenasalized sounds are considered as two separate phonemes when they

occur medially so they form consonants cluster in this position, e.g. hande [hande]

‘today’.

It is clear that Fulfulde prefer open syllables (which end in a vowel) over the close

syllables (which end in a consonant) which are very common in English. In addition,

English has a very flexible syllable structure in contrast to Fulfulde as it has more than

sixteen possible syllable types, e.g., CV "me" /miː/, CCCV "spray" /spræe/, VCC "ant"

/ænt/ , CCCVCCC "splints" /splɪnts/ (Cox et al. 2009).

3.4. Consonants gemination and vowel length

In consonants as well as vowels, length is phonemic and it results in contrast

(difference in meaning). Long (geminated) consonants can only occur in medial position.

Consider the following examples, which belong to different roots and show the

contrasting minimal pairs through gemination (Huber et al 2011:8-9):

du’a [duʔa] ‘pray’ :: du’’a [duʔːaǃ] ‘fall downǃ’

haɓa [haɓu] ‘fightǃ’ :: haɓɓa [haɓːu] ‘tieǃ’

wala [walu] ‘lay downǃ’ :: walla [walːu] ‘help’

Such phonological phenomena are not found in English. Instead there are many

consonants clusters e.g., sport [spɔ:t], which is not very common in Fulfulde as

mentioned above. Finally, not all the Fulfulde consonants can be lengthened. Some of the

consonants such as f, s, h, ŋ, w, y may not be lengthened.

The Fulfulde language has 5 vowel phonemes; both short and long vowels (Table

2 above). The long vowels are written as a sequence of two identical vowels

(orthographically). Whereas in English there are 12 short vowels and 5 long vowels /i:, ɜː,

aː, ɔː, uː/ and 8 diphthongs (Roach 1998ː18-22). In Fulfulde, in contrast to English,

change in vowel length in medial position can result in contrasting minimal pairs (Huber

2011:9-10):

/u/, /uː/ hula [hula] ‘be afraid” :: huula [huːla] ‘cross’

3.5. Contrasting phonemes of Fulfulde and English

Table 3 below shows some of the phonemes that are found in Fulfulde, but not in

English and vice versa. V+ means ‘voiced’, V- is ‘voiceless’ and ø stands for ‘not found’.

The table shows that the two languages contrast in 15 phonemes. English has more

fricatives (7 fricatives) than Fulfulde (3 fricatives). The Fulfulde language has

prenasalized (/mb/, /nd/ and /ŋɡ/) and laryngealized (/ɓ/ and /ɗ/) stops that are not found

in English at all. Both languages have fricative /f/, but it contrasts in the place of

articulation as it is bilabial in Fulfulde and labiodental in English. The same is true about

the alveolar /r/, however, in this case the contrast is in the manner of articulation, since it

is a trill in Fulfulde, whereas in English it is a lateral /r/.

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Table 3: Contrasting phonemes

Fulfulde English

bilabial fricative V- /f/ ø

ø labiodental fricatives V- /f/ and V+ /v/

ø dental fricatives V- /θ/ and V+ /ð/

ø alveolar fricative V+ /z/

ø palatal fricatives V+ /ʒ/

palatal nasal stop V+ /ɲ/ ø

prenazsalized stops/mb/,/nd/and /ŋɡ/ ø

ø alveolar lateral V+ /r/ alveolar trill V+ /r/ ø

laryngealized V+ stops /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ ø

4. Morphology 4.1. Definiteness

In English there are three definiteness articles: one definite, i.e. the, and two

indefinite a and an, whereas in Fulfulde there is no definiteness at all but it is realized

pragmatically (through the context) only.

4.2. Number

Singular and plural forms of nouns in English regular nouns is formed by adding

the inflectional plurality marker –s to indicate plurality, e.g. teacher, teachers. In

Fulfulde it depends on the noun class, as there are (semantically) different noun classes.

Examples:

class pl. suffix singular plural gloss

personal nouns

-be

modibo

birowo

modi-be

birow-be

‘teacher’

‘milkman’

kinship nouns -en inna

bappa

inn-en

bapp-en

‘mother’

‘uncle’

Sometimes these classes are classified according to lexical classes (in contrast to

the semantics), such as Arnott 1970 who classified them according to the nouns endings.

Fulfulde, in contrast to English, also uses initial consonants alternation to indicate

plurality. Examples:

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class singular plural gloss

personal

ɡɔrkɔ wɔrɓɛ ‘man, men’

non-personal wɔdɛrɛ ɡudɛ ‘cloth, clothes’

4.3. Adjectives

Adjectives in English precede the noun (e.g. beautiful girl) whereas; in Fulfulde

they follow the modified noun and agree with it

yemɓe mawɓe neɗɗo mawɗo

people big person big

‘big people’ “big person’

4.4. Personal pronouns

English has 7 personal pronounsː I, you, we, they, he, she, it. In Fulfulde there are

8 as followsː miin ‘I’, aan ‘you singular’, onon ‘you plural’, hanko, ‘he/she’, hambe

‘they’, minon ‘we exclusive’, enen ‘we inclusive’ and gel ‘it’. It is obvious that the two

languages diverge in the second person singular and plural (in Fulfulde there are

inxclusive & exclusive and two distinct particles for second person ‘you’), and third

person plural pronouns (on particle is used for the two genders in Fulfulde):

Person English Fulfulde gloss

Second person 2nd

we

you (sing and pl)

minon

onon

aan

onon

2nd plural exclusive

2nd plural inclusive

2nd singular

2nd plural

Third person 3rd he (male)

she (female)

hanko he / she

4.5. Possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns in English precedes the noun e.g. my mother, his cow, etc. In

Fulfulde it follows the noun (and is suffixed to it sometimes). Consider the following

examples (cf. Gamble et. al 1993ː41):

inna-am ‘my mother’

reedu-ma ‘your stomach’

shede mako ‘his/her money’

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4.6. Verbs (present/continuous, past/accomplished and future tenses)

4.6.1. Present continuous tenseː English determine it by adding the inflectional suffix -

ing to the verb to indicate continuity e.g.

He is speaking I am coming

Fulfulde language on the other hand usually uses the particle don before the verb

to indicate the continuity of the action. Consider the following examplesː

be don wara ‘they are coming’

mi don nyama ‘I am eating’

Bello don loota ‘Bello is washing (anything)’

4.6.2. Past tenseː English language uses the inflectional suffixe -ed to indicate the

past/accomplished tense in the regular verbs such as work > worked, walk >

walked, etc. In Fulfulde they use the suffix -ii to refer to past tense wada > wad-ii

‘bring > broght’, wara > war-ii ‘come > came’.

4.6.3. Future tenseː In English the future tense is assigned by the modal auxiliary, will,

shall or going to. For instance,

I will come tomorrow.

Ali is going to leave.

The suffix -ta is used in Fulfulde (instead of the English particle) to refer to future

tense for exampleː

an, a yaha-ta luumo? ‘You, will you go to the market’

4.7. Adverbsː Fulfulde they use a derivational suffix such as English dose in forming

adverbs ( e.g., -ly quick > quickly) e.g. yawu ‘quick’ jawɗum ‘qickly’. But Fulfulde

duplicate the adverb for intensity e.g. jawɗum jawɗum ‘Very quickly’.

4.8. Numeralsː The following table includes the numerals of English and Fulfulde (cf.

Gamble et. al 1993:95 and Taylor 1953ː52)ː

English Fulfulde English Fulfulde

1 one go’o/goto 12 twelve sappo e ɗiɗi etc.

2 two ɗiɗi 20 twenty sappanɗe ɗiɗ

3 three tati 21 twenty one sappanɗe e go’o

4 four nayon 22 twenty two sappanɗe e ɗiɗ etc.

5 five jowi 30 thirty sappanɗe5 tati

5 sappanɗe means tens: sappanɗe tati = three tens ‘thirty’.

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6 six jowego’o 40 forty sappanɗe nayon

7 seven joweɗiɗi 50 fifty sappanɗe jowi

8 eight jowetati 60 sixty sappanɗe jowego’o

9 nine jowenayon 70 seventy sappanɗe joweɗiɗi

10 ten sappo 80 eighty sappanɗe jowetati

11 eleven sappo e go’o 90 ninety sappanɗejowenayon

It is evident from this table that Fulfulde, in contrast to English, has a numeral

system based on five (jowi ‘five’ jowetati ‘eight’ lit. five + three’) and the preposition e

‘and’ is used to create numerals, such as the compound English number ‘twenty-one’ is

presented as sappanɗe ɗiɗi e goto, lit. ‘Twenty and one’.

4.9. Morphological contrasts between Fulfulde and English

Finally, it is clear that these two languages contrast in means of morphological concepts in

many ways, such as the realization of definiteness, which is realized pragmatically in

Fulfulde, but morphologically in English. The number (singular vs. plural) distinct in the

two languages as there are noun classes in Fulfulde i.e. it depends on which class the noun

belongs to in addition to which morpheme is used with each class (see section 4.2.).

However, English uses inflectional morphemes (only) to represent plurality.

English does not have inclusive and exclusive pronouns for 1st person plural and different

second person pronouns for singular and plural as Fulfulde. Another contrast is the position

of the possessive pronouns in Fulfulde, which is after noun, whereas it is before the noun in

English. Fulfulde has a concordance system regarding the adjectives, which is not the case

in English. With regard to the verbs, English employs inflectional morphemes to indicate

tense whereas Fulfulde uses particles. The numeral system of Fulfulde, is based on five.

For example, six (jowego’o) = five (jowi) + one (go’o). On the other hand, English has a

distinct term refer to each one of such numbers (see section 4.8).

5. Semantics Cooking in English and Fulfulde

Cook has three senses in English: cook₁ = to prepare a meal (general) (field:

household tasks), cook₂ = to prepare all foods other than those sold in bakeries (more

specific, contrasts only with bake), cook36 = to apply heat in some way to food (four

lexical fields: boil, fry, broil, and bake₂ that are hyponyms of cook₃).

The following are subsets of lexemes from the cook field in English and Fulfulde. The

following table shows their semantic components in the two languages: 6 + means having the relevant component,

- that it is lacking it, and

0 that it doesn’t apply one way or the other

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English

C1 with

water

C2 with fat C3 in oven C4 contact

with flame

C5 gentle

cook 0 0 0 0 0

boil + - - + -

simmer + - - + +

fry - + - + 0

roast - - + - 0

toast - - - + 0

bake - - + - 0

Fulfulde

C1 with

water

C2 with fat C3 in oven C4 contact

with flame

C5 gentle

dɛfaɗum1

‘cook’

0 0 0 0 0

dɛfaɗum 2

‘boil’

+ - 0 + -

dɛfaɗum3

‘simmer’

+ - 0 + +

shaaɗum

‘fry’

- + 0 + 0

njudaaɗum

‘toast’

0 - 0 + 0

pornaɗum

‘steaming’

0 - 0 0 +

dɛfaɗum4

‘bake’

- - + - 0

Cook = dɛfaɗum1ː have the same senses of preparing food from C1 to C2 in booth

languages.

Boil = dɛfaɗum2 ː is in water, on flame, rapidly.

Simmer = dɛfaɗum3 ː is in water, on flame, gently.

Fry = ø

Roast = ø

Toast = shaaɗumː on flame.

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Bake = dɛfaɗum4 : i.e. in oven in both languages.

Pornaɗum = ø (not found in English) cooking through steam only.

None of the cooking types in Fulfulde are in oven, which is something not found in the

Fulani people’s environment.

Other contrasting senses in English and Fulfulde are found in kinship terms such

as in English man/husband, woman/wife, boy/son, girl/daughter. On the other hand, in

Fulfulde one word stands for the two English senses: man/husband = gorko, woman/wife

= debo, boy/son = ɓiɗo, girl/daughter = ɓingel.

6. Syntax

Word order in English and Fulfulde (subject (S), verb (V), object (O))

6.3. Positive and negative statements: Fulfulde and English positive and negative

statement sentences have the same order, but the negative marker in Fulfulde is suffixed

to the verb and doesn’t require an auxiliary as in English e.g.

Bello noday ma = Bello is calling you

S V O S V O

mo yaha-ta lumo = He is not going to the market

S V NEG market S NEG V O

6.4. Interrogatives: Questions in Fulfulde are signaled by using one of three devices

(Baumbach 1997:31):

a rising intonation pattern such as:

a-wart-i:

you.SG-come-PAST ‘did you (SG) come?’

the use of the tag particle naa 'isn't that right?' at the end of the sentence;

e.g. a-war-ii naa?

you.SG-come-PAST Q-partcle ‘did you (SG) come?’

by using interrogative particles for example:

moye waddi nga?

Q-particle brought it

‘who brought it?’

English on the other hand uses two ways in forming questions and the first is not

found in Fulfulde (as interrogative sentences in Fulfulde do not change the word

order):

yes/no questions by having an auxiliary (AUX) at the beginning of the sentence:

Did you come?

AUX O V

using question particles (Wh-questions) e.g.,

Where did you come from?

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6.5. Imperatives: One of the examples of the English imperative is the following

negative imperative e.g. Don’t help them! But imperatives have no effect on the basic

word order in English. But the negative imperative in English needs the helping verb (do)

to combine the negative particle (not). Fulfulde differ in that the ending for an active

imperative verb is: -u for one person, -ee for multiple people (Huber et al 2011:13):

V O nyaamu nyiiri ndeye!

eat.IMP.sg local food this

‘Eat this food! ’ (for one person)

V O

nyaamee nyiiri ndeye!

eat.IMP.pl local food this

‘Eat this food!’ (for many people)

7. Conclusion

This contrastive linguistic study of Fulfulde and English is an attempt to show the

differences between the two languages in some linguistic domains. This paper shows

important contrast between the languages, which can be very useful to know, especially

for English speakers, who want to learn Fulfulde, but also for Fulfulde speakers studying

English as a second language. The study contains a description of Fulfulde, which

contributes to more knowledge about this language, which is less described than English.

In the phonology section, the most observable contrasts, which every learner of Fulfulde

should be aware of, are the existence of the prenasalized phonemes, the richness of

allophones and the consonants gemination that can result in different meanings (see

section 3). Fulani learners of English also have to make efforts to master phonemes such

as fricatives, which are not found in Fulfulde, and the English trill /r/ in contrast to the

Fulfulde lateral /r/.

Definiteness in Fulfulde is not realized morphologically by employing certain particles as

the English a, an and the. Instead, Fulfulde determines definiteness pragmatically only

from the context. Fulfulde also has a concordance system between the adjective and the

modified noun, which is not one of the characteristics of the English language (see

section 4 above).

In semantics these languages vary in the meaning of the different types of the word cook,

as explained above, which is obviously related to the environment of the language

speakers. Syntactically the two languages do not vary much in word order

8. Recommendations

What is unique about this study is that it sheds light on a poorly studied field of

linguistics, which shows the contrasts between the two languages as opposite to the

similarities. I have not come across any previous contrastive study between Fulfulde and

English during my study, which makes it a first step to future, more extensive and deep

contrastive studies to show the interesting contrasts between these two languages, as well

as of any other African language.

14

Finally, the limitation of time and space of this paper requires future and further studies

in this field.

References

Arnott, David W. (1970) The nominal and verbal systems of Fula. Oxford, Clarendon

Press.

Baumbach, Jean M. (1997) A brief Linguistic Sketch of Wodaabe Fulfulde Including

Consonant Alternation. United States, UMI Company.

Breedveld, J. O. (2006) Fulfulde. In Brown, Keith & Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.) (2009),

Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World (pp 430-433), United

Kingdom, Elsevier Ltd. Cox, Felicity Jonathan Harrington and Robert Mannell. (2009) Phonetics and

Phonology, The Syllable: Introduction. Macquarie University. Retrieved from: http://clas.mq.edu.au/phonetics/phonology/syllable/syll_introduction.html

Gamble, David P., Salmon, K. Linda & Baldeh, Marry Umah (1993), Firdu-Fula

Grammar (Gambian Dialect), San Francisco, San Francisco State University

Harrison, Annette (2003) Fulfulde Language Family Report. Retrieved from:

http://www.sil.org/silesr/2003/silesr2003-009.html

Huber, Carolin, Deye, Alhaji Umaru Babuga and Esa, Alhaji Yakubu et. al. (2011)

Orthography Guide For Fulfulde-Jaafun As Spoken In The North West Region

Of Cameroon. Yaounde, Cameroon, SIL.

James, Carl (1980) Contrastive Analysis. Singapore, Longman Singapore Publisher.

Mcintosh, Mary (1984) Fulfulde syntax and verbal morphology. United Kingdom, St.

Edmundesburry Press.

Roach, Peter (1998) English Phonetics and Phonology. United Kingdom, Cambridge

University Press.

Swift, Lloyde B. (ed.) (1965) Fula: Basic course. Washington D.C., Foreign Service

Institute.

Stennes, Leslie H. (1967) A reference grammar of Adamawa Fulani. Michigan, the

African Studies Center, Michigan State University.

Taylor, F. W. (1953) A grammar of the Adamawa Dialect of the Fulani Language

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Yule, George (2006) The Study of Language. (3rd ed.) New York, Cambridge University

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Appendixes

Appendix 1: Map shows the Geographical distribution of Fulfulde language (the

terms are according to the location)

Source: http://www.sil.org/silesr/2003/silesr2003-009.html

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Appendix 2ː Informants’ information

The first informant:

Languageː Fulfulde

Dialectː Adamawa

Nameː Ayman Al-Amin Yahya Babikir

Sexː male

Ageː 21 years old

Place of birthː Sudan, Al-Rusaris City, Brous Village

Educationː University student

Father’s language and dialectː Fulfulde language, Adamawa dialect

Mother’s language and dialectː Fulfulde language, Burnu dialect

Place of interviewː Sudan, Khartoum, University of Khartoum Residence

Language useː the only language at home and sometimes used at university

The second informant:

Languageː Fulfulde

Dialectː Sokoto

Nameː Badereldeen Suleiman Mohammed Mohammed

Sexː male

Ageː 26 years old

Place of birthː Sudan, Kassala City, Al-Sawagi Al-Shimalia Al-Karmata

Educationː University student

Father’s language and dialectː Fulfulde language, Sokoto dialect

Mother’s language and dialectː Fulfulde language, Hadidja dialect

Place of interviewː Sudan, Khartoum, University of Khartoum Residence

Language useː used sometimes at home only and always in Kassala.