The affirmative plain-completive marker for a third-person feminine singular subject is ta: Amina ta zo “Amina came,” Ta gama “She has finished,” and Ta sani “She knows.” The same two letters occur in several other Hausa forms, so word order and construction are essential: preverbal subject–TAM ta is not automatically the same morpheme as postverbal object ta or possessive -ta.
All unlabelled examples are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa). Ordinary boko uses ta without tone or vowel-length marks. Linguistic transcription can distinguish homographs more explicitly, but normal target sentences should retain ordinary standard spelling.
Ta in the plain-completive paradigm
| Person | Plain completive | With zo “come” |
|---|---|---|
| 1st singular | na | na zo |
| 2nd masculine singular | ka | ka zo |
| 2nd feminine singular | kin | kin zo |
| 3rd masculine singular | ya | ya zo |
| 3rd feminine singular | ta | ta zo |
| 1st plural | mun | mun zo |
| 2nd plural | kun | kun zo |
| 3rd plural | sun | sun zo |
| impersonal | an | an zo |
Ta dawo lafiya.
She returned safely.
Amina ta gama aikin.
Amina finished the work / Amina has finished the work.
Yarinyar ta karɓi saƙon.
The girl received the message.
A full noun subject does not eliminate the marker. Amina identifies the referent; ta marks feminine singular agreement and completive viewpoint. English does not have this kind of obligatory preverbal subject–aspect complex, which is why English-speaking learners often omit it.
Feminine grammatical agreement
Ta agrees with a feminine singular noun, not only with a female person. Feminine agreement can be required by a noun denoting an object or abstract entity.
Malama ta shiga aji.
The teacher entered the classroom. (female teacher)
Mota ta tsaya a bakin hanya.
A car stopped by the roadside. (feminine agreement)
Wutar ta mutu da dare.
The electricity went out at night. (feminine agreement)
English it gives no clue to Hausa gender. Learn the agreement behavior of frequent nouns: mota ta, wuta ta, but masculine littafi ya. Natural gender still matters for people: malam ya refers to a male teacher, while malama ta refers to a female teacher.
Active predicates present a complete event
With active predicates, ta normally reports the event as complete.
Jiya Amina ta kira ni sau biyu.
Yesterday Amina called me twice.
Ta ajiye makullin a cikin jaka.
She put the key in the bag.
Ta ba shi kuɗin mota.
She gave him the bus fare.
In Ta ba shi, ta is the feminine singular subject–TAM marker, ba is the lexical verb “give,” and shi is the masculine recipient. The verb ba exceptionally takes the recipient series ni/ka/ki/shi/ta/mu/ku/su; do not replace shi here with masa.
The completive views the action as a whole. Context chooses between English simple past and present perfect: Ta gama can be “She finished” or “She has finished.”
Stative predicates can express a current state
With certain predicates of knowledge, ability, perception, or comparison, ta can describe an established state that English puts in the simple present.
Ta san inda ofishin yake.
She knows where the office is.
Ta iya tuƙi sosai.
She can drive very well.
Ta fi ni haƙuri.
She is more patient than I am.
This does not mean ta has become a present tense. It means that completive viewpoint plus a stative lexical meaning yields an established-state interpretation. Compare active Ta koyi tuƙi bara “She learned to drive last year,” which describes a bounded acquisition event.
See active and stative verb interpretations for this aspect–lexical meaning interaction across the paradigm.
Time expressions locate the completion
Jiya ta kammala rahoton.
Yesterday she completed the report.
Yanzu ta gane matsalar.
Now she understands the problem.
Zuwa gobe da safe, ta kammala rahoton.
By tomorrow morning, she will have completed the report.
The final example establishes a future reference point and views completion as achieved by that point. Za ta kammala rahoton gobe “She will complete the report tomorrow” instead predicts a future event. This contrast is clearer than calling ta a past-tense pronoun.
Plain and relative ta share ordinary spelling
The feminine singular relative completive is also written ta. Neutral assertion uses plain ta; a constituent question, focus construction, or relative clause selects relative ta.
Amina ta sayi mota.
Amina bought a car. (plain completive)
Me Amina ta saya?
What did Amina buy? (relative completive)
Amina ce ta sayi motar.
Amina is the one who bought the car. (relative completive after feminine focus ce)
The spelling does not reveal the difference, but the syntax does. Me marks a focused question constituent; Amina ce is a focus frame. Relative ta is not merely another name for past tense.
Distinguishing the several forms written ta
Preverbal subject–TAM ta, postverbal object/recipient ta, possessive -ta, the feminine independent possessive tata, and prepositional ta “via/by” occupy different structures.
Ta kira ta jiya.
She called her yesterday.
The first ta comes before the verb and marks the subject plus completive viewpoint. The second follows kira and is the direct object “her.”
Ta ɗauki jakarta, ni kuma na ɗauki tawa.
She took her bag, and I took mine.
In jakarta, -ta is a possessive suffix “her”; in tawa, a related possessive form stands independently for “mine.” Neither is the completive marker.
Mun bi ta Zariya kafin mu isa Kano.
We went via Zaria before reaching Kano.
Here ta follows bi and introduces the route “via Zaria.” Its position and complement make the prepositional function clear.
The independent pronoun is ita, not ta:
Ita ta kawo ruwan; shi ya kawo abincin.
She brought the water; he brought the food. (contrastive)
Ita supplies contrast; following ta supplies the finite subject–TAM frame. English normally translates the pair with one stressed she.
Negative completive is ba ta … ba
Use ba ta … ba to deny a completed event or established state with a feminine singular subject.
Ba ta kira ni jiya ba.
She did not call me yesterday.
Amina ba ta gama aikin ba.
Amina did not finish the work.
Ba ta san amsar ba.
She does not know the answer.
The closing ba is required in this negative-completive pattern. Negative continuative Ba ta zuwa ranar Lahadi “She does not come on Sunday” belongs to another TAM series and normally does not take the closing particle.
Compare nearby TAM frames
Ta ci abinci.
She ate / She has eaten. (plain completive)
Tana cin abinci.
She is eating. (continuative)
Za ta ci abinci.
She will eat. (future)
Hausa changes the preverbal subject–TAM complex while the lexical predicate remains recognizable. English learners must therefore attend to ta/tana/za ta, not attempt to change only the lexical verb as English does with eat/ate.
Common Mistakes
1. Dropping ta after a feminine noun subject.
❌ Amina gama aikin.
Incorrect — the noun subject does not replace the subject–TAM marker.
✅ Amina ta gama aikin.
Amina finished the work.
2. Using masculine ya with a feminine noun.
❌ Motar ya tsaya.
Incorrect — mota controls feminine singular agreement.
✅ Motar ta tsaya.
The car stopped.
3. Treating every ta as the same pronoun.
❌ Ta kira ita da safe.
Incorrect in a neutral object position — independent ita has been used where object ta is required.
✅ Ta kira ta da safe.
She called her in the morning. (subject–TAM ta + object ta)
4. Omitting the closing negative particle.
❌ Amina ba ta gama aikin.
Incorrect for the standard negative completive.
✅ Ba ta kammala aikin ba.
She did not complete the work.
5. Calling focused ta plain because it looks identical.
❌ Amina ce ta kawo ruwan.
Incorrect if analyzed with plain ta — focus selects relative-completive ta.
✅ Amina ce ta kawo ruwan.
Amina is the one who brought the water. (relative-completive ta)
Key Takeaways
- Ta marks a third-person feminine singular subject in the affirmative plain completive.
- Full noun subjects still require the marker: Amina ta zo, motar ta tsaya.
- Active predicates normally describe completed events; stative predicates can describe present established states.
- Plain and relative ta look identical, but neutral assertion, focus, questions, and relatives select different paradigms.
- Object/recipient ta, possessive -ta, independent ita, and prepositional ta have distinct positions and functions.
- Negative completive uses ba ta … ba.
Now practice Hausa
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Hausa →Related Topics
- Plain Completive: Third Person Masculine Singular (ya)A2 — Use ya with a masculine singular subject in neutral completive clauses and distinguish its aspectual role from independent and object pronouns.
- Plain Completive: Third Person Plural (sun)A2 — Use third-person plural sun for neutral completed events and established plural states, while keeping it distinct from suka and ba su … ba.
- The Hausa Subject–TAM ComplexA1 — Understand the preverbal Hausa forms that express subject agreement together with tense, aspect, mood, and polarity.
- Active and Stative Verb InterpretationsA1 — See how a verb's action or state meaning changes the time interpretation of Hausa completive and continuative constructions.
- Completive Meaning with Active VerbsA2 — Understand how Hausa plain-completive markers present actions, processes, and changes as bounded wholes rather than simply marking past tense.
- Relative Completive: Complete Person ParadigmB1 — Master all nine Hausa relative-completive subject markers and recognize their focus, relative, temporal, narrative, negative, and stative uses.