Postpositions –Ro and –Lan As Clitics In Kanuri
Keywords:
Kanuri, Postpositions, -ro, -lan, clitics, affixesAbstract
This paper examines the syntactic functions of the postpositions –ro and –lan as clitics in Kanuri within the framework of descriptive linguistics adopting the works of zwicky and pullum (1983) and Spencer and Luis (2012) as theoretical framework. Primary sources of data collection are Kanuri written texts: Sǝmonǝm wuro sarusǝgǝne by Norbert Cyffer and Nyariwa Kanuribe by Shettima Bukar Abba and John Hutchison. These two texts are collection of stories written in the Yerwa dialect of Kanuri. All the various places where the postpositional particles –ro and –lan occurred are identified and extracted for presentation and analysis. The outcome of the study reveals that the postpositions –ro and –lan function as clitics and can be attached to both lexical and functional categories in Kanuri. Syntactically, the postpositions can be cliticized to nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, relativizers ‘dǝ’, dependent possessive pronoun ‘-nzǝ’ (his/her) and the genitive marker ‘-be’ to express different semantic functions.
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