Allomorphic Variations of Fulfulde Plural Suffix Morphemes

Abstract

Fulfulde as a language of the Fulve is widely spoken across the Fulaphones. Its grammar, notwithstanding, has been described to an extent, including morphology, leaving a dearth of research in the morphological manifestations. Though, Hussaini (forthcoming,) presented an analysis of allomorphic variations of Fulfulde singular suffix morphemes. In view of this, we attempt to undertake this research with the hope to fill the existing gap between singular and plural suffix variations. Therefore, paper looks at the allomorphic variations of Fulfulde plural suffix morphemes by the way of suffixation method. The data are mainly drawn from Mohammed (2015) and other from native speakers intuition. The study reveals that among the six plural suffix morphemes namely; Ve, Xe, Xi, Kon, Ko, and Koy the first three (Ve, Xe and Xi) preserve allomorph suffix variations while the last three are not characterized with any allomorphs. The paper uncovered that Ve, Xe, and Xi took regular allomorph variants contrary to Mohammed (2015) study who claimed that they are plural forms independently. Therefore, the paper maintained that /-en/suffix is an allomorph of ve plural class, /-e/, /-le/, /-je/ are allomorphs of Xe plural class whereas /-i/, /-li/ and /-ji/ are allomorphs of Xi plural class form respectively, all which are in complimentary distributions.