Coordination creates a unit from two or more parallel expressions, and that unit limits extraction. Hausa can front an entire coordinated phrase—Musa da Amina ne suka shirya taron “It was Musa and Amina who organized the meeting”—or connect one fronted phrase to a role in every coordinated clause. It does not productively extract one member from inside an ordinary X da Y phrase while leaving the other member behind.
All unlabelled examples are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa). Coordinate structure constraint, conjunct, and across-the-board extraction are (academic) labels. Ordinary boko omits tone and vowel length. Hausa uses da for noun-phrase and other non-finite phrase coordination, while finite clauses are typically juxtaposed or linked with kuma, amma, or ko according to meaning. See Da for Noun-Phrase Coordination for the basic phrase-level system.
Neutral coordination and whole-phrase focus
Start with neutral S–TAM–V–O order:
Musa ya sayi shinkafa da wake.
Musa bought rice and beans. (one coordinated object phrase)
The entire object shinkafa da wake can be focused:
Shinkafa da wake ne Musa ya saya, ba gari ba.
It was rice and beans that Musa bought, not flour.
The two nouns move as one coordinate phrase. Ne follows the whole plural/coordinate expression, relative completive ya belongs to Musa, and the object position after saya is empty. The focused phrase is not two separately fronted objects.
Subjects behave similarly:
Musa da Amina sun shirya taron.
Musa and Amina organized the meeting. (neutral coordinated subject)
Musa da Amina ne suka shirya taron.
It was Musa and Amina who organized the meeting.
Plural sun/suka exposes the plain-versus-relative contrast. Hausa does not use singular agreement with the nearer conjunct in this standard coordinated-subject pattern.
Why one-conjunct extraction fails
The coordinate structure constraint says that extraction cannot normally target just one conjunct or a position inside only one conjunct. A form modeled on English contrastive movement is therefore unsafe:
❌ Shinkafa ce Musa ya sayi da wake.
Incorrect for the intended reading ‘It was rice that Musa bought rice and beans’; one conjunct has been pulled out of the coordinated object.
The grammatical correction fronts the full coordinate phrase, or makes two independent claims:
✅ Shinkafa da wake ne Musa ya saya.
It was rice and beans that Musa bought.
Musa ya sayi shinkafa. Ya kuma sayi wake.
Musa bought rice. He also bought beans.
The second repair is useful when only rice, not beans, is being corrected. It avoids pretending that one surviving da phrase still has a missing first conjunct.
Across-the-board questions
One fronted expression can be interpreted in matching roles in both coordinated clauses. This is called across-the-board or ATB extraction (academic):
Me suka karanta kuma suka rubuta?
What did they read and write? (the same item is the object of both verbs)
Initial me corresponds to the object position after both karanta and rubuta. Both predicates use relative completive suka because both participate in the question dependency. If the speaker means different objects, Hausa should name them or ask separate questions.
One-sided extraction makes the coordination structurally uneven:
❌ Me suka karanta kuma suka rubuta wasiƙa?
Not the safe canonical pattern for ‘What did they read, and they wrote a letter?’; me is linked only to the first conjunct.
✅ Me suka karanta? Kuma sun rubuta wasiƙa?
What did they read? And did they write a letter?
In the repair, the second clause is a separate polar question and returns to plain sun. Punctuation is not doing the grammar alone; each clause now has its own information structure.
Across-the-board relatives may mix a gap and resumption
Hausa coordination provides strong evidence that a gap and a resumptive pronoun can participate in the same long dependency. Consider this marked relative:
Abokina da na ziyarta amma ban same shi a gida ba ya kira ni jiya.
My friend, whom I visited but did not find at home, called me yesterday.
The relative head abokina is the understood object of ziyarta in the first conjunct and is resumed by shi after same in the second. Both conjuncts describe the same friend. The example is (formal/academic) because the long relative is structurally dense; the pattern itself is well established.
ATB relations can even assign different grammatical roles in the two conjuncts:
Ga mutumin da na ba shi aron bargona amma duk da haka yake jin sanyi.
Here is the man whom I lent my blanket but who nevertheless still feels cold.
The man is represented by recipient shi in the first conjunct and is the subject encoded by relative continuative yake in the second. “Across the board” therefore means that every conjunct contains a legitimate dependency on the same head; it does not require identical word positions.
Da does not coordinate finite clauses
The particle da coordinates noun phrases, adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and nominalized expressions. It is not the ordinary linker between two full finite clauses:
❌ Yaran sun share ɗakin da sun wanke tagogi.
Incorrect use of da to join two finite clauses.
✅ Yaran sun share ɗakin, kuma sun wanke tagogi.
The children swept the room, and they washed the windows.
Simple juxtaposition is also natural when the events form a close sequence: Yaran sun share ɗakin, sun wanke tagogi. Repeating sun matters: each finite predicate has its own subject–TAM support. The absence of an overt “and” is not extraction or gapping.
Negation and alternatives in coordination
Negation must make its scope clear. A single negative clause can reject an entire coordinate object:
Musa bai sayi shinkafa da wake ba.
Musa did not buy rice and beans. (scope can depend on context)
Natural-language coordination and negation can be logically ambiguous: the sentence may deny the combined purchase without asserting that he bought neither item. For an explicit “neither,” repeat or otherwise clarify the negative claim.
A disjunctive question uses ko rather than copying English inversion:
Musa ya sayi shinkafa ko wake?
Did Musa buy rice or beans?
If the intended question asks which entire combination was purchased, front the interrogative phrase and use the appropriate relative pattern:
Wane irin abinci Musa ya saya?
What kind of food did Musa buy?
Do not split shinkafa da wake merely because English can emphasize one word more strongly.
A short discourse
—Musa da Amina sun shirya taron? —A’a, Musa da Hauwa ne suka shirya shi. —Me suka tsara kuma suka rarraba? —Jadawalin taron ne suka tsara kuma suka rarraba. —Rahoton fa? —Sun rubuta shi, amma ba su rarraba shi ba.
—Did Musa and Amina organize the meeting? —No, it was Musa and Hauwa who organized it. —What did they prepare and distribute? —It was the meeting schedule that they prepared and distributed. —What about the report? —They wrote it, but they did not distribute it.
The subject correction fronts a whole coordinated noun phrase. The next question and answer create an ATB object dependency across two predicates. The final topic uses shi independently in each clause because only distribution is negated.
Common Mistakes
1. Extracting one member of a coordinated object
❌ Madara ce Amina ta sayi da sukari.
Incorrect one-conjunct extraction; one member has been pulled out of the coordinated object.
✅ Madara da sukari ne Amina ta saya.
It was milk and sugar that Amina bought.
2. Using da between finite clauses
❌ Musa ya zo da Amina ta tafi.
Incorrect for ‘Musa came and Amina left’; da does not ordinarily coordinate these finite clauses.
✅ Musa ya zo, kuma Amina ta tafi.
Musa came, and Amina left.
3. Keeping plain TAM in an ATB question
❌ Me yaran sun girka kuma sun ci?
Incorrect canonical fronted question; both plain sun forms conflict with the dependency.
✅ Me yaran suka girka kuma suka ci?
What did the children cook and eat?
4. Letting one conjunct lack subject marking
❌ Ma’aikatan sun gyara famfo, kuma wanke mota.
Incorrect finite second clause; its subject–TAM marker is missing.
✅ Ma’aikatan sun gyara famfo, kuma sun wanke mota.
The employees repaired a tap, and they washed a car.
5. Treating marginal short-object resumption as the default ATB pattern
⚠️ Me suka karanta shi kuma suka rubuta?
Marked and not the reliable learner model: direct-object resumption is marginal in short wh-extraction, even though gap–resumptive mixing is established in relative clauses.
✅ Wane rahoto suka karanta kuma suka gyara?
Which report did they read and correct?
Key Takeaways
- A coordinated noun phrase can move or focus as a whole; one conjunct cannot normally be extracted alone.
- One fronted phrase may correspond to a role in every coordinated clause: across-the-board extraction.
- Hausa ATB relatives may mix a gap in one conjunct with a resumptive pronoun in another.
- Each finite conjunct still requires its own subject–TAM marking.
- Use da for phrase coordination and kuma, another clause linker, or juxtaposition for finite clauses.
Related Topics
- Long-Distance DependenciesC1 — Interpret Hausa wh-words, focused phrases, and relative heads whose grammatical role is realized inside an embedded clause.
- Island Constraints in Questions and RelativesC1 — Recognize the Hausa clause types that block gap-based extraction and the narrower resumptive strategy available to some relative dependencies.
- Ellipsis and GappingC1 — Omit recoverable Hausa material inside noun phrases, answers, and coordinated clauses without deleting required subject–TAM marking.
- da for Noun-Phrase CoordinationA1 — Join Hausa noun phrases with da, distinguish coordinated subjects from accompaniment, and avoid using da as a mechanical connector between finite clauses.
- Noun Coordination da or Clause Linker kuma?B1 — Use da to build one coordinated noun phrase, and kuma to add another finite proposition or mark an additional participant’s contribution.
- 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.