Resultative Predication | Hausa Grammar

A resultative says that an event causes an entity to reach a new state: English cook the meat soft, wipe the table clean, hammer the can flat. English can place a bare adjective directly after the object. Hausa more often lexicalizes the change in a verb or adds a finite clause which names the resulting state.

That distinction matters syntactically. In a Hausa finite result clause, the entity affected is the subject of the second predicate and must have its own subject–TAM marker. Hausa does not productively permit an English bare adjective to be appended to any transitive verb. Compare this endpoint meaning with the simultaneous states on Depictive Secondary Predicates. All unlabelled examples below are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa).

Start with the ordinary event clause

The causing event retains neutral S–TAM–V–O order:

Amina ta dafa naman a tukunya.

Amina cooked the meat in a pot.

Amina is subject, feminine singular ta marks the completive, dafa is the verb, and naman is its object. This clause reports cooking but does not by itself guarantee any particular final texture.

To assert that the meat reached softness, Hausa can add a finite result clause:

Amina ta dafa naman har ya yi laushi.

Amina cooked the meat until it became tender.

The first clause has naman as object. In the har clause, the same meat is understood as the result bearer and controls masculine singular ya. Yi laushi predicates the attained quality. The second marker is not optional: it makes the result a full predication.

Ta daka barkonon har ya yi laushi.

She pounded the pepper until it became smooth.

Sun murƙushe gwangwanin har ya zama lebur.

They crushed the can until it became flat.

Har makes the endpoint relation explicit: the action continued to the point at which the result held. Zama “become” is useful when the resulting expression is naturally predicated with it, as in ya zama lebur.

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In the har strategy, identify the result bearer and give the result clause a matching subject–TAM marker: nama ... ya yi laushi, riga ... ta yi fari, kayan ... sun bushe.

Lexical verbs can package the change and result together

Hausa often uses a verb whose lexical meaning already includes a change of state:

Rigar ta bushe a rana.

The gown dried in the sun.

Gilashin ya karye lokacin da ya faɗi.

The glass broke when it fell.

Bokitin ya cika da ruwa.

The bucket filled with water; the bucket became full of water.

The completive is natural because an endpoint has been reached and its result is relevant. English translations may use either a simple past (dried) or a present result (is dry), but Hausa organizes the meaning through lexical aspect and the completive.

A causative form can add an external causer:

Musa ya tsayar da motar a bakin hanya.

Musa brought the car to a stop by the roadside.

Amina ta cika bokitin da ruwa.

Amina filled the bucket with water.

The choice between an inchoative and a causative changes argument structure. Rigar ta bushe makes the gown the sole subject; rana ta busar da rigar makes the sun the causer-subject and the gown the object. Learn established verb pairs and their complements rather than mechanically inventing causatives.

A second finite clause can report a consequence

Hausa also places two finite clauses in sequence when the second reports what happened to the first clause’s object:

Musa ya tura ƙofar, ta buɗe.

Musa pushed the door, and it opened.

Amina ta wanke rigar, ta yi fari sosai.

Amina washed the gown, and it became very white.

The comma in translation is not the grammar; the crucial fact is that ƙofa and riga each control feminine ta in the second predication. This looser two-event presentation does not necessarily say that the first event continued until the result. Add har when attainment of the endpoint is central:

Amina ta goge teburin har ya yi tsabta.

Amina wiped the table until it became clean.

The difference between mere sequence and a tightly linked result is real. Speakers choose har to make the culmination explicit, not simply as an ornamental equivalent of English and.

Resultative and depictive meanings must be separated

Compare an attained state with a simultaneous state:

Ta dafa naman har ya yi laushi sosai.

She cooked the meat until it became very tender. (resultative)

Ta ci naman yana da zafi.

She ate the meat while it was hot. (depictive)

Tenderness is the endpoint caused by cooking in the first sentence. Heat is simply true of the meat during eating in the second; eating need not have caused it. Hausa makes the contrast clearer by using a result clause with har for the first and a simultaneous finite state clause for the second.

This distinction prevents an English-speaking learner from attaching a Hausa property word after an object and hoping context will decide. When causation or culmination matters, build it overtly.

Negation can target the action or the result

Negating the matrix event denies that the action occurred:

Amina ba ta dafa naman ba.

Amina did not cook the meat.

Negating the result after affirming the action says that the attempted or completed action failed to produce the expected state:

Amina ta dafa naman, amma bai yi laushi ba.

Amina cooked the meat, but it did not become tender.

The second clause uses masculine negative completive bai ... ba because nama is its subject. A question about the result likewise makes the bearer the subject:

Naman ya yi laushi bayan Amina ta dafa shi?

Did the meat become tender after Amina cooked it?

These clause boundaries remove a scope ambiguity. A single negative wrapped around a long har construction can be unclear about whether the action failed to occur, the endpoint failed to be reached, or both.

Focused reordering and cross-clause reference

Neutral order places the affected object after the matrix verb:

Musa ya goge teburin har ya yi tsabta.

Musa wiped the table until it became clean. (neutral)

If speakers contrast the table with the chair, the object can be focused:

Teburin ne Musa ya goge har ya yi tsabta, ba kujerar ba.

It was the table that Musa wiped until it became clean, not the chair.

Teburin is followed by ne, and its matrix object position after goge is a gap. The ya in har ya yi tsabta is not a repeated object of goge. It is the required masculine subject–TAM marker of the separate result clause, where the focused table is the understood result bearer.

Feminine singular relative and plain completive both appear as ta in Amina ta dafa, so focus does not create an audible segmental contrast there. The clause is nevertheless licensed by the same focus/relative syntax used when the forms differ visibly.

A short discourse motivates the marked order

—Amina ta dafa kayan lambun har sun yi laushi? —A’a, naman ne ta dafa har ya yi laushi. Ta soya kayan lambun kaɗan kawai. —To, naman ya yi laushi sosai? —I, ya yi laushi, amma bai bushe ba.

—Did Amina cook the vegetables until they became soft? —No, it was the meat that she cooked until it became tender. She only fried the vegetables briefly. —So did the meat become very tender? —Yes, it became tender, but it did not dry out.

The correction licenses object focus. Notice that plural kayan lambun controls sun in the question, while masculine singular naman controls ya in the answer. Agreement tracks the result bearer in each finite result clause.

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Focus can remove the object from its matrix position, but it cannot remove finite subject marking from the result clause. Those are two different syntactic roles.

Common Mistakes

1. Copying an English bare result adjective

❌ Amina ta tafasa dankalin laushi.

Incorrect for the intended resultative — laushi is not a freely appended English-style adjective.

✅ Amina ta tafasa dankalin har ya yi laushi.

Amina boiled the potato until it became tender.

2. Omitting the result clause’s subject marker

❌ Ta goge teburin har yi tsabta.

Incorrect — the table must control a subject–TAM marker in the result clause.

✅ Ta goge teburin har ya yi tsabta.

She wiped the table until it became clean.

3. Giving the result clause agreement from the causer

❌ Amina ta wanke rigar har ya yi fari.

Incorrect — feminine riga is the result bearer, not masculine agreement.

✅ Amina ta wanke rigar har ta yi fari.

Amina washed the gown until it became white.

4. Confusing a simultaneous state with a caused result

❌ Ta sha ruwan har ya yi sanyi.

Wrong for ‘she drank the water while it was cold’ — this says the drinking continued until the water became cold.

✅ Ta sha ruwan yana da sanyi.

She drank the water while it was cold.

5. Repeating a focused object in the matrix clause

❌ Naman ne Amina ta dafa shi har ya yi laushi.

Incorrect for the canonical gap-type object focus intended here — shi repeats the matrix object.

✅ Naman ne Amina ta dafa har ya yi laushi.

It was the meat that Amina cooked until it became tender.

Key Takeaways

Hausa often expresses results through lexical change-of-state verbs or a finite har result clause.
The result bearer controls a subject–TAM marker in the second clause.
Inchoative and causative predicates assign subject and object roles differently.
A resultative state is caused or attained; a depictive state merely holds during the event.
Object focus leaves a gap after the matrix verb, but the focused referent can still control required subject marking in the result clause.

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