A Morphological Compounding Analysis of Hausa Registers Use in Nigerian Cell-phone Market

Abstract

: This study aims to find the compound registers that are used among the Farm-Centre cell-phone marketers, analyse their compounding morphological structures, and explain the meaning they convey. The Farm-Centre Cell-phone Market is located in Kano metropolis, the largest city of Northern Nigeria. The study employs an ethnographic method of data collection and adopts Abubakar (2000) as a model of approach when analysing the structures of the compound registers. It is found that the registers have the following six morphological compound structures: (i) Genitive-based compounds [LG+N] N , (ii) Noun-based compounds [N+GL+N] N , (iii) Adjective-based compounds [Adj+N] N , (iv) Diminutive-based compounds [Dim+N] N , (v) Particle dà ‘with’ compounds [dà+N] N , (vi) Verb-based compounds [V+VN/Prep] V . Moreover, the registers are so special among the marketers because they convey meanings that are irrelevant to the conventional meanings known by the general speakers of the Hausa language.