A descriptive analysis of linguistic change in the Adamawa Fulfulde in Nigeria

Abstract

Language change is an inevitable, regular and continuous process, and this may start with a simple variation, as is evident in the Fulfulde spoken in Yola and its environs. The paper aims at analysing the phonological, morpho-phonological and morpho-syntactic changes that affect not only the forms but also the functions of the affected structures. Unstructured observation and spontaneous interview are the methodological techniques that were used for eliciting data for this study. A descriptive approach was used to present and analyse the data. The study discovered that Fulfulde in the multilingual community of Yola and its environs has really manifested variations that affected the linguistic norms of the grammatical aspects of the language. Such effects are traced to the phonological and morpho-phonological elements as well as some morpho-syntactic aspects, and leading to the limitation of the initial consonant alternation, modification of some personal pronouns, modification of some functional grammatical morphemes and introduction of a new phoneme /v/ into the language. Eventually, they resulted in the evolution of a remarkable
variety of Fulfulde peculiar to that area.