ABSTRACT

This study examines the noun phrase in Yoruba and Hausa languages, which is a sub-area under syntax. The aim of this study is to do an open comparison between the target languages, through their noun phrases. Data was collected through oral interview from respondents who were native speakers of the target languages. The instrument employed during the research was oral interview, which was used as a tool for the collection of qualitative data for this research work. The theoretical framework used for this study is Chomsky’s (1957) Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG), which is concerned with producing an infinite number of grammatical phrases and sentences. A section under this theory, which is the phrase structure rule (which specifies how constituents should be arranged from the smallest constituents to the larger ones on a tree diagram) was used to analyze the data. During the course of the research,

we found out that most noun phrases in Yoruba and Hausa languages do not have an article or a determinant. Also, Yoruba language uses head-first position for most of its noun phrase, except for exceptional cases; while Hausa language uses both the head-first and head-last position. This study was carried out because noun phrases in local languages are rarely researched on and this will help students learning either of the target languages to know how the languages are being structured, either at the phrasal, clausal or sentential level; and also linguists working on any of the target languages in other areas. This study is recommended to all language learners and lovers who are interested in how languages differ due to one of the most important factors which is their arrangement.