Abstract
Fulfulde is the language of Fulɓe, an ethnic group
of nomads spread across nations from Western to Eastern Africa (Senegal to
Sudan and Ethiopia), as going back to their ancestry. When we put together, the
nomads and the sedentary, the Fulɓe as a tribe count more than twenty million
speakers, both natives and learners. Historically, Fulɓe came to Africa from
the Middle East, but their origin is still subject to great speculations. For
its particular trait, a great number of linguists agree that Fulfulde is a
verb-based language. This is to say that most of the linguistic elements of
Fulfulde language derive from a verbal root, and this phenomenon is more
pronounced in nominal formation. It is clearly noticed that human, vegetal,
animal and environmental traditional names in Fulfulde trace their origin from
verbs. This paper aims at proving right or otherwise this hypothesis through an
investigative base methodology. Fulfulde verbs have been collected at random,
the names that derived from them traced and their derivational process
investigated and explained. The main objective of this investigative paper is
to bring out this specific particularity of Fulfulde, a language among the
major African languages.
Keywords: Fulɓe, Verb, Name, Derivational
Morphology, Word Syntax.
DOI: 10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i02.003
author/ỌlaideAkinwande
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 2(2) | August 2026 |
