Existential and possessive predications in Hausa

Abstract

The functions of the Hausa particle dà are, among others, an existential predicate, a comitative preposition, and a coordination conjunction. It is also used in the main possessive ‘have’ predication in combination with the copula nàa ‘be at’. In previous accounts, this possessive construction is said to have the structure [possessor is with possessed] or [possessor is (somewhere) with possessed], thus taking the particle dà in this construction to be the comitative preposition. This article instead shows that the existential predicate dà, through grammaticalization, independently gave rise to the comitative dà and the particle dà used in the possessive construction. The article shows that the possessive construction derives from the structure [[possessor is at] [possessed exists]], a structure for which source sentences can be reconstructed using Heine's (1997) approach. This structure is also shown to fit with other facts of Hausa morphology and syntax better than the alternative analyses.