By
Ibrahim Ahmed, PhD
Department of
Nigerian Languages and Linguistics
Kaduna State
University, Kaduna – Nigeria
Email: iabg29201968@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper explores
the ‘Hausa Metalanguage Terms’ and accounts for the use of affixation as one of
the terms' formation processes within the framework of descriptive linguistics
– the linguistic ideology that
prioritizes the systematic description of the languages of the world in their
diversity based on empirical observation of regular patterns in natural speech. The paper provides
detailed analyses evidential to the substantial use of a wide range of affixal
operations in coining some of the metalanguage’s constituent terms. Prior to
that, some conceptual clarifications and theoretical postulations underscoring
the paper’s major gist are first addressed. Subsequently, the terms in focus
are categorized, exemplified, and described based on the different affixational
sub-processes involved in their formation. By providing both
conceptual/theoretical background and practical examples, the paper
demonstrates how affixation functioned as one of the key morphological
processes discovered to have been involved in the creation of some of the
investigated terms, thus highlights among other implications that such affixation-driven
terms have the potentials of modeling future terminology formation and
development endeavours in the Hausa language.
Keywords: affixation, Hausa metalanguage, terms, descriptions, implications
DOI: www.doi.org/10.57233/tjllc.2026.v05i03.002
author/Ibrahim Ahmed
journal/Tasambo JLLC 5(3) | February 2026 |
