A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND HAUSA

ABSTRACT This study is a research on the topic: “A Comparative Analysis of Word-formation Processes in English and Hausa”. This work aims to serve as a reference material to subsequent studies in English and Hausa languages in their various components of linguistic structures. It would also provide a framework for the study and analysis of the word-formation processes in English and Hausa. The study would also add to the research findings and meta-theory in linguistics thus, contributing to the current trend of intellectualism from the point of view of language. The work also attempts to enumerate and compare some of the word-formation processes in English and Hausa, such as acronyms, affixation, alternation, backformation, blending, borrowing, clipping, coinage, compounding, and reduplication. A sample descriptive approach was employed in the analysis of the data collected for this research. Thus, the procedure followed is a synthesis of the analytical comparative model of Nida (1949) and the stages of linguistic analysis of Carl (1996). Therefore, some of the research findings are that English and Hausa use some processes to create some words; that affixation is one of the processes found in both English and Hausa; that some of the processes discussed here could be found in one and not in the other language, etc. Finally, it contains brief conclusion.