A headless relative fills a noun-phrase or adverbial slot without an overt lexical noun such as mutum “person” or abu “thing.” Hausa uses forms including wanda, wadda, waɗanda for “the one/those who or that,” and larger patterns such as abin da, inda, and yadda for “what,” “where,” and “how.” With duk, a headless relative can generalize over every person, thing, place, or circumstance that satisfies its clause: duk wanda ya zo “whoever comes.”
All unlabelled examples are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa). Ordinary boko preserves Hausa special letters and leaves tone and vowel length unmarked.
For the foundational gender contrast before these advanced readings, see free relatives with wanda and wadda.
A headless form occupies the head position
Compare an overt linked head with a free relative:
Na ba mutumin da ya gyara famfon kuɗinsa.
I paid the man who repaired the pump.
Na ba wanda ya gyara famfon kuɗinsa.
I paid the one who repaired the pump. (male or grammatically masculine referent)
The headed construction has mutumin da: joined linker -n plus invariant da. In the headless construction, wanda itself supplies “the one” and introduces the clause. It does not take another da.
Gender and number remain grammatical:
Wadda ta kawo rasit ɗin tana bakin ƙofa.
The one who brought the receipt is at the doorway. (female)
Waɗanda suka ɗauki akwatunan sun riga sun tafi.
Those who carried the boxes have already left.
Masculine wanda takes ya/yake, feminine wadda takes ta/take, and plural waɗanda takes suka/suke when the free relative is the subject inside its own clause.
Subject and object headless relatives
A headless relative can represent the subject of its clause, as above, or a missing object. In an object relative, the overt internal subject controls TAM:
Ka zaɓi wanda likita ya zaɓa.
Choose the one that the doctor selected. (masculine item; addressing one male)
Na sayi wadda Hauwa take nuna wa kwastomomi.
I bought the one that Hauwa shows to customers. (feminine item)
Mun tattara waɗanda ma’aikatan suka bari a ɗakin.
We collected the ones that the employees left in the room.
In the first example, masculine likita controls ya; in the second, feminine Hauwa controls take; in the third, plural ma’aikatan controls suka. The direct object is a gap—do not repeat shi, ta, su after the verb.
The gender of a thing follows the grammatical gender of the understood noun. A feminine item such as an understood mota can be wadda; wanda is not a generic form that replaces all inanimate nouns.
Abin da: “what” and “the thing that”
For an unspecified thing or proposition, abin da is extraordinarily productive. Historically and synchronically its visible shape contains linked abin plus invariant da, but the whole expression often translates as English what.
Ban fahimci abin da shugaban yake nufi ba.
I did not understand what the director meant.
Ka rubuta abin da muka amince da shi a taron.
Write down what we agreed on at the meeting. (addressing one male)
The second example retains da shi because amince da “agree with/on” selects a prepositional complement. This differs from a simple direct-object gap.
When the intended referent is a known countable person or object, wanda/wadda/waɗanda may be more precise. Abin da profiles content or a thing without lexical classification.
Place and manner headless relatives
Inda introduces a place identified by a clause, while yadda introduces manner or degree. These forms can occupy the same larger positions as English where and how, but their internal Hausa clauses still choose appropriate TAM.
Mun koma inda muka ajiye motar da safe.
We returned to where we had parked the car in the morning.
Babu wanda ya san inda za a yi taron gobe.
No one knows where tomorrow's meeting will be held.
Ta bayyana yadda ake cike fom ɗin ga sababbin ma’aikata.
She explained how the form is filled in to the new employees.
Inda is already locative; do not add an unnecessary resumptive equivalent of English there after an intransitive location predicate. By contrast, a headed place relative may spell out a spatial relation: gidan da muka zauna a cikinsa “the house in which we stayed.”
Generalization with duk
Placing duk before a headless relative quantifies over every matching case. English often uses whoever, whatever, or wherever, but Hausa makes the universal force overt with duk.
Duk wanda ya kawo katin rajista zai samu lamba.
Whoever brings a registration card will receive a number.
Duk wadda take son shiga ƙungiyar ta cika wannan fom.
Any woman who wants to join the association should fill in this form.
Duk waɗanda suka kammala aikin za a biya su yau.
All those who completed the work will be paid today.
Za mu gyara duk abin da ya lalace kafin a buɗe shagon.
We will repair whatever has broken before the shop opens.
The completive ya/suka can describe the condition that must be satisfied in each case; it need not place the whole sentence in past time. The future or directive in the main clause supplies the prospective interpretation.
Kowa “everyone/anyone,” komai/kome “everything/anything,” ko’ina “everywhere/anywhere,” and koyaushe “always” are lexicalized words written together in Nigerian Standard Hausa. They overlap semantically with generalizing relatives but are not formed by splitting off ko:
Kowa zai iya tambaya, amma duk wanda yake son yin jawabi ya rubuta sunansa.
Anyone may ask a question, but whoever wants to give a speech should write down their name.
The first expression quantifies directly; the second adds a full condition that identifies the relevant people.
Negation and existential force
With babu, a headless relative commonly means “there is no one/none who...”:
Babu wanda yake da mabuɗin ɗakin yanzu.
There is no one who has the room key now.
The negative force comes from babu. Do not add a final negative ba to the relative unless the relative predicate itself is independently negated. Compare babu wanda ya zo “no one came” with babu wanda bai zo ba “there is no one who did not come,” whose inner bai ... ba has its own negation.
Resumption in headless relatives
Headlessness does not erase oblique or possessive structure:
Za mu sanar da wanda aka zaɓi ɗansa sakamakon da yamma.
We will inform the one whose son was selected of the result in the evening. (male possessor)
Masculine -sa on ɗansa resumes wanda, while aka has an unspecified subject. A prepositional relation similarly retains its pronoun: wanda muka yi magana da shi “the one whom we spoke with.”
Common Mistakes
1. Adding da after a free relative
❌ wanda da ya kira ofishin
Incorrect—wanda already introduces the relative clause.
✅ wanda ya kira ofishin
The one who called the office. (masculine)
2. Ignoring feminine agreement
❌ wadda yake jiran motar haya
Incorrect subject relative—wadda is feminine.
✅ wadda take jiran motar haya
The one who is waiting for the taxi. (female)
3. Keeping plain plural TAM
❌ waɗanda sun kawo takardu
Incorrect canonical restrictive free relative—sun is plain completive.
✅ waɗanda suka kawo takardu
Those who brought documents.
4. Repeating a direct-object gap
❌ waɗanda muka zaɓa su
Incorrect canonical direct-object relation—the final su repeats the head.
✅ waɗanda muka zaɓa
The ones that we selected.
5. Splitting lexicalized ko indefinites
❌ ko wa zai iya shiga
Incorrect spelling for the intended general ‘anyone/everyone’ reading.
✅ kowa zai iya shiga
Anyone can enter.
Key Takeaways
- Wanda, wadda, waɗanda fill a nominal head position and show gender or number; they do not take an additional da.
- Object headless relatives take agreement from their internal subject and normally leave a direct-object gap.
- Abin da, inda, yadda package thing/content, place, and manner meanings.
- Duk + headless relative produces generalizing meanings such as “whoever” and “whatever.”
- Lexicalized kowa, komai/kome, ko’ina, koyaushe are single words, not analytically split ko phrases.
- Headlessness does not remove relative TAM or the resumptives required by possessive and prepositional relations.
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Start learning Hausa →Related Topics
- Free Relatives with wanda and waddaA2 — Use Hausa wanda and wadda for headless expressions meaning ‘the one who/that,’ with the right gender, gap, and relative TAM form.
- Plural Free Relatives with waɗandaA2 — Use waɗanda for headless plural relatives meaning ‘the ones who/that,’ with plural agreement, object gaps, and relative TAM.
- Relative Clauses with Plain Noun HeadsA2 — Use ordinary lexical nouns such as mutum, mota, and yara as linked heads before Hausa da-relative clauses.
- Resumptive Pronouns in RelativesB1 — Know when a Hausa relative leaves a gap and when a pronoun or possessive suffix must preserve the head noun's grammatical relation.
- Free-Choice Indefinites with koB1 — Use joined Hausa indefinites for free choice while distinguishing their universal, negative, and concessive readings from genuinely separate ko.
- Restrictive and Nonrestrictive InterpretationsC1 — Distinguish Hausa relatives that identify a referent from parenthetical relatives that add a discourse comment.