An Introduction to Morphology and Syntax of the Kanuri Language

Kanuri is one of the Saharan languages; it belongs to the Nilo-Saharan phylum, spoken by over four million people as their first language (mother tongue) in the present day Borno and Yobe states in Nigeria.

This book consists of four chapters. The first chapter is a general introduction, it covers the etymology of the term Kanuri, history of the people, the classification of the language, as well as an overview of the language dialects. The second chapter deals with the morphology and tonal systems of the language, the morphological parts include the description, analysis and interpretations of the morphological processes that occur in the language while concerning tones, an auto-segmental analysis is adopted to account for the language tonal systems. The third chapter dwells on the syntax of the language using Chomskian's approach as well as Government and Binding theory in analysing Kanuri sentences.

Tree diagrams and phrase structure rules of the sentences analysed are drawn. The fourth chapter,that is the concluding part presents the vocabulary and types of sentences that occur in the language.

The book's authors-Muhammad Fannami and Mohammed Aminu Mu'azu are PhD holders in General Linguistics, Associate Professors and Lecturers in the Department of Languages and Linguistics, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria.