Morphophono-Logics of Interrogatives in Fulfulde Noun Classes

Fulfulde language is classified under African languages, as a family member of Niger-Congo, under West Atlantic group. It has some family members such as Wolof, Serer, and Joola. (Greenberg 1963). It has six dialects across West Africa, which are: Fuuta Tooro, Fuuta Jaaloo, Masina, Sokoto and Western Niger, Central Northern Nigeria and Eastern Northern Nigeria, and Adamawa (Arnott 1972 p. 8). In Fulfulde language, nominal stems must be accompanied by a nominal class suffix (McIntosh 1984 p. 43) and agreement in noun affects both words and sentences in the language (Ahmed 2011 p. 27). The noun classes peculiar to Adamawa dialect of Fulfulde attach an interrogative –yee suffix to form an interrogative word. In order to answer the questions formed by attaching the –yee suffix, a modification of -yee to -yaa occurs in the process. The formations and the answers of the interrogatives follow some logical ordering from simplex to complex, which are discussed in this paper, and supported with examples. This paper is a descriptive linguistics research with a native intuition of the researcher, whom is a native to the Adamawa dialect, as a primary source of data. In conclusion, the paper found out that in Fulfulde dialect of Adamawa, all the noun classes form an interrogative word by adding -yee affix, and form an answer through ablaut of -yee to –yaa morphemes. Phonological processes such as assimilation, deletion and metathesis occur in the formation of the interrogatives.