The traditional term relative TAM names the forms seen in contrasts such as sun/suka and suna/suke. The plain-versus-relative overview teaches their basic distribution. The label is useful because relative clauses select these paradigms, but it is incomplete: the same forms occur with fronted questions, explicit focus, certain temporal clauses, and—in the completive—foregrounded narrative. Competing analyses illuminate different parts of that distribution.
This page is (academic) and compares analyses rather than replacing the dedicated formation pages. All unlabelled examples are neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa. Tone and vowel length, crucial in scholarly transcription, are not marked in ordinary boko examples here.
Start with controlled sets
Hold the participants and event constant while changing clause structure:
| Construction | Completive | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Neutral assertion | Sun sayi shinkafa. | The purchase is the main assertion. |
| Object question | Me suka saya? | The event frame is used to request the missing object. |
| Relative clause | shinkafar da suka saya | The purchase identifies a particular rice supply. |
| Clefted focus | Shinkafa ce suka saya. | The object is selected from alternatives. |
Sun sayi shinkafa a kasuwa.
They bought rice at the market. (neutral assertion)
Me suka saya a kasuwa?
What did they buy at the market? (object question)
Na ga shinkafar da suka saya a kasuwa.
I saw the rice that they bought at the market. (restrictive relative clause)
Shinkafa ce suka saya a kasuwa.
It was rice that they bought at the market. (object focus)
The event time can be identical throughout. Suka is therefore not a special past marker. The opposition concerns how an aspectual proposition is integrated into syntax and discourse.
The continuative gives the parallel contrast:
Suna gyaran hanya yanzu.
They are repairing a road now. (neutral assertion)
Me suke gyarawa yanzu?
What are they repairing now? (object question)
Hanyar da suke gyarawa tana kusa da kasuwa.
The road that they are repairing is near the market. (relative clause)
Wannan hanyar ce suke gyarawa yanzu.
It is this road that they are repairing now. (object focus)
Here suna/suke differ while yanzu fixes the same present-time frame. Any analysis that calls the relative form “past” fails immediately.
Analysis 1: the traditional relative label
The oldest practical generalization is morphological and distributional: use the “relative” counterpart where a relative clause, constituent question, or focused constituent licenses it. It is easy to teach and accurately predicts many core constructions.
Matar da take sayar da nama ta koma gida.
The woman who sells meat has gone home.
Wa yake sayar da nama a nan?
Who sells meat here?
Its weakness is terminological. Neither a fronted object question nor a main-clause narrative sequence is literally a relative clause. Deriving all such examples from an invisible relative clause merely restates the label and misses genuine differences among constructions.
Analysis 2: a marker of syntactic dependency or movement
Tuller and later syntactic work connect relative morphology with the dependency created when a constituent is fronted and interpreted as an argument or adjunct of the following clause. Relative clauses, wh-fronting, and ex-situ focus all involve such a dependency, often described as A′-movement.
A ina suka ajiye motar?
Where did they park the car?
A nan ne suka ajiye motar.
It was here that they parked the car.
Wurin da suka ajiye motar yana da inuwa.
The place where they parked the car is shaded.
This analysis captures the striking unity of the three constructions. It also explains why a polar question can keep the plain form: nothing has been extracted to request a constituent value.
Sun ajiye motar a nan?
Did they park the car here? (polar question; plain completive)
Yet syntax alone does not explain everything. Relative completive also occurs in historical narrative where no overt constituent has been fronted. Moreover, some speakers allow a plain form in nonrestrictive relatives, variation that a simple movement switch does not predict.
Analysis 3: definite or presupposed aspect
A discourse-oriented account calls the forms definite or presupposed because the clause often supplies an established event frame while another value is at issue. In Me suka saya?, the question asks for the purchased thing and normally accommodates that a purchase occurred. In shinkafar da suka saya, the purchase helps identify the rice rather than serving as the matrix assertion.
Da safe ne suka tashi.
It was in the morning that they left.
Lokacin da suka tashi, ana ruwan sama.
When they left, it was raining.
The analysis captures information structure better than the literal word relative. It also helps explain a documented speaker variation: some speakers allow a general form as an alternative in nonrestrictive relatives, whose supplementary proposition does not identify or delimit the antecedent in the way a restrictive relative does.
But “presupposed” is not an exceptionless lexical meaning. A speaker can ask a genuine information question without personally knowing that the embedded event occurred, and discourse can cancel an assumption. More decisively, a narrative relative completive normally advances new foreground events.
Muka shiga ɗakin, muka zauna, muka fara magana.
We entered the room, sat down, and began to talk. (foregrounded narrative sequence)
Those events are not background facts. Presupposition is therefore a strong account of many focus, wh, and restrictive-relative uses, not the complete meaning of every relative-TAM form.
Analysis 4: several related constructional functions
Some work separates an aspectual relative use from uses that locate a specific event time or organize a narrative. Abdoulaye, for example, argues that relative perfective in ordinary relatives and out-of-focus clauses can mark presupposition, while the morphologically identical form in certain temporal environments functions as a specific-time marker. Jaggar’s unified narrative-and-focus account instead emphasizes communicative prominence: the fronted value is prominent in focus and wh-constructions, while the event itself is prominent in a foregrounded narrative chain.
These proposals disagree about how much semantic unity to assign the paradigm. They nevertheless share an important warning: identical morphology does not guarantee one simple English translation or one discourse effect.
Da suka iso, taron ya riga ya fara.
When they arrived, the meeting had already begun. (specific temporal boundary)
Sai suka buɗe ƙofar, suka shiga ciki.
Then they opened the door and went inside. (narrative foreground)
Ƙofar da suka buɗe tana bayan gidan.
The door that they opened is behind the house. (restrictive relative)
The learner-facing generalization is constructional: recognize relative clauses, fronted wh-questions, clefts/focus, temporal subordination, and narrative chains as licensed environments, then interpret the discourse relation locally.
Active and stative predicates keep their own meanings
Relative TAM does not override lexical aspect. An active event such as faɗi “fall” is readily bounded; a stative predicate such as san “know” can yield a current state under completive morphology.
Musa ne ya faɗi a bakin ƙofa jiya.
It was Musa who fell by the doorway yesterday.
Musa ne ya san amsar yanzu.
Musa is the one who knows the answer now.
Both clauses use written ya, but the predicate and adverb determine the English time interpretation. Calling the second ya a past marker would predict the wrong translation.
Negation removes much of the positive contrast
Positive completive and continuative paradigms visibly contrast plain and relative forms. Standard negative constructions do not simply preserve that positive opposition.
Aisha ce ba ta kawo takardun ba.
It was Aisha who did not bring the documents.
Wa ne ba ya zuwa aiki ranar Asabar?
Who does not come to work on Saturdays?
Do not manufacture ba suka … ba or ba suke … just to keep a positive relative marker. Focus, question structure, or relativization remains present in the syntax, while negative TAM uses its own paradigm.
A practical decision procedure
- Determine the aspectual construction: completive or continuative.
- Ask whether the clause is a neutral assertion. If yes, choose the plain paradigm.
- Check for a restrictive relative clause, a fronted constituent question, or explicit ex-situ focus. These normally select relative TAM.
- Recognize licensed temporal and narrative uses on their own terms; do not invent a hidden relative clause.
- Under negation, choose the appropriate negative construction instead of mechanically preserving positive relative morphology.
- Interpret time through adverbs, discourse, and aktionsart, not through sun/suka or suna/suke alone.
Common Mistakes
1. Calling suka a past marker.
❌ Su ne suka san amsar jiya kawai.
Incorrect if meant to say that suka forces a past-only interpretation.
✅ Su ne suka san amsar har yanzu.
They are the ones who know the answer even now.
2. Keeping the plain form in a fronted object question.
❌ Me sun saya a kasuwa?
Incorrect in the standard fronted wh-construction.
✅ Me suka saya a kasuwa?
What did they buy at the market?
3. Treating all questions alike.
❌ Suka sayi shinkafa?
Incorrect as the neutral polar question intended here — relative suka is not required merely because the clause is a question.
✅ Sun sayi shinkafa?
Did they buy rice?
4. Deriving a narrative chain from invisible relative clauses.
❌ Wanda muka shiga, wanda muka zauna, wanda muka fara taro.
Incorrect attempt to derive each narrative event from an overt relative-clause frame.
✅ Muka shiga, muka zauna, muka fara taro.
We entered, sat down, and began the meeting.
5. Preserving positive relative morphology under negation.
❌ Kuɗin ne ba suka kawo ba.
Incorrect standard negative-completive form.
✅ Kuɗin ne ba su kawo ba.
It was the money that they did not bring.
Key Takeaways
- Relative is a conventional paradigm label, not proof that every occurrence derives from a relative clause.
- A syntactic-dependency analysis unifies relative clauses, fronted wh-questions, and ex-situ focus.
- Definite/presupposed analyses capture how many such clauses provide an established event frame, but they do not explain every narrative use.
- Temporal and narrative distributions motivate constructional or polyfunctional accounts.
- Plain and relative forms do not inherently differ in event time.
- For production, learn the licensed construction; for interpretation, combine syntax, information structure, discourse, and aktionsart.
Related Topics
- Plain and Relative TAM FormsA1 — Choose plain Hausa completive and continuative forms for neutral clauses, and relative forms for focus, constituent questions, and relative clauses.
- Plain versus Relative Completive: PresuppositionB2 — Understand how plain and relative completives divide assertion from background in Hausa without turning presupposition into a mechanical tense rule.
- Plain versus Relative Continuative: PresuppositionB2 — Understand how plain continuative asserts an open proposition while relative continuative places that proposition in the background of focus, wh-questions, and relative clauses.
- Relative Completive in Focus ConstructionsB2 — Use the relative completive in explicit Hausa focus constructions while separating focus, polarity, aspect, and time reference.
- Relative Continuative in Focus ConstructionsB2 — Build Hausa subject, object, time, and place focus with ne or ce and the relative-continuative subject forms.
- Completive in Narrative SequencesA2 — Build Hausa event chains with narrative completive forms while separating foreground storyline, neutral reporting, background description, and negation.