Many Hausa grade relationships reorganize valency—the number and kind of participants a verb selects. A transitive member profiles an actor or cause plus an affected object; its intransitive partner profiles the changing or affected entity as subject. Frequent patterns include Grade 1 paired with Grade 3, Grade 1 paired with Grade 7, and an intransitive base paired with a transitivizing Grade 5 member, traditionally called “causative.” These are strong generalizations, but every pair remains a lexical fact: Hausa does not guarantee a partner for every verb.
All unlabelled examples are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa). Ordinary boko omits tone and vowel length. Where two members share spelling, their different tonal patterns must be learned from a marked source and heard in speech.
The semantic pivot: which participant is subject?
Compare tara “collect/gather” and Grade 7 taru “assemble.” The first makes the organizer subject and the people collected object. The second makes those people the plural subject.
Shugabar sashen ta tara sabbin ma’aikata a babban zaure.
The head of department gathered the new employees in the main hall. (transitive)
Sabbin ma’aikatan sun taru a babban zaure.
The new employees assembled in the main hall. (intransitive Grade 7)
This is not an active/passive paraphrase in every context. Sun taru can describe the employees assembling through their own coordinated action; it need not imply an unnamed supervisor. Grade 7 often profiles an affected result, but lexical and discourse structure decide whether the relation is passive, anticausative, reciprocal, or simply intransitive.
The transitive member across four environments
The Grade 1 member tara illustrates why valency pairing and object-conditioned morphology must not be conflated. It can occur with an understood object, a noun object, a pronoun object, or a licensed indirect participant. In technical pronunciation, Grade 1 has its expected environment-sensitive length/tone details, although ordinary boko writes tara throughout these examples.
Kwamitin ya tara tun makon jiya.
The committee has been collecting since last week. (object understood from context)
Kwamitin ya tara kuɗin gyaran makaranta.
The committee collected the money for repairing the school. (noun direct object)
Kwamitin ya tara su cikin kwana uku.
The committee collected them within three days. (direct-object pronoun)
Kwamitin ya tara wa makarantar kuɗin gyara.
The committee collected repair funds for the school. (beneficiary introduced by wa)
The intransitive partner cannot copy those cells:
Mambobin kwamitin sun taru bayan sallar azahar.
The committee members assembled after the noon prayer. (intransitive partner)
❌ Mambobin sun taru kuɗin gyara.
Incorrect—taru cannot take kuɗin gyara as a direct object.
✅ Kwamitin ya tara kuɗin gyaran kafin wa’adin ya cika.
The committee collected the repair funds before the deadline.
The related morphology changes both the form and the argument structure. It is not merely a final vowel chosen because a noun follows.
Grade 1 and Grade 3: causative/change-of-state pairs
Some derived Grade 1 and Grade 3 members look identical in boko but contrast in tone and valency. Fusata has a transitive “anger someone” member and an intransitive “become angry” member. Faɗaɗa similarly means either “broaden something” or “become broad,” according to the selected grade and frame.
| Transitive frame | Intransitive frame | Alternation |
|---|---|---|
| Labarin ya fusata Musa. | Musa ya fusata da labarin. | stimulus/cause subject → experiencer subject |
| Gwamnati ta faɗaɗa hanyar. | Hanyar ta faɗaɗa. | causer subject → changing entity subject |
Labarin ya fusata shi, amma bai ce kome ba.
The report angered him, but he said nothing. (transitive partner with pronoun object)
Ya fusata da labarin, sai ya fita daga ɗakin.
He became angry about the report, so he left the room. (intransitive; da marks the stimulus)
An faɗaɗa titin domin rage cunkoso.
The road was widened to reduce congestion. (impersonal clause with transitive member)
Titin ya faɗaɗa bayan gadar.
The road became wider beyond the bridge. (intransitive member)
English sometimes uses the same surface verb in both frames (the door opened / she opened the door). Hausa may mark the contrast by grade, tone, suffixal extension, or a separate lexeme. When boko spelling hides the tone contrast, syntax still exposes it.
Basic intransitive and transitivizing Grade 5
One major Grade 5 function adds an actor or causer and creates a transitive frame, with the affected participant introduced after da. Compare ɓata “get lost/be spoiled” with ɓatar da “cause to be lost; lose; waste.” “Causative” is a useful traditional label for this relation, but it is not a complete definition of Grade 5, which also has directional or efferential uses.
Makullin motar ya ɓata a cikin ofis.
The car key got lost inside the office. (basic intransitive)
Na ɓatar da makullin a hanya.
I lost the key on the way. (Grade 5 causative/transitive)
Kada mu ɓatar da lokaci a kan gardamar da ba ta da amfani.
Let’s not waste time on a pointless argument. (lexicalized collocation)
The literal causal relationship remains visible in ɓatar da makulli, but ɓatar da lokaci is a conventional extension “waste time.” A learner needs both the derivation and the collocation. The form da belongs to this Grade 5 transitivizing construction; it is not an English passive by phrase.
Grade 1 and Grade 7: patient/result alternations
Grade 7 frequently derives an intransitive whose subject corresponds to the object of a transitive base.
| Transitive member | Grade 7 member | Usual contrast |
|---|---|---|
| gyara mota | mota ta gyaru | repair a car / car improves or gets repaired |
| soya nama | nama ya soyu | fry meat / meat fries or is fried |
| kama barawo | barawo ya kamu | catch a thief / thief becomes caught |
| tara mutane | mutane sun taru | gather people / people assemble |
Makanikin ya gyara motar haya da sassafe.
The mechanic repaired the taxi early in the morning.
Motar ta gyaru bayan an canja famfon mai.
The car improved after the fuel pump was replaced.
The alternation predicts the broad direction of valency, not every nuance. Gyaru can focus improvement without asserting a particular repairer; taru can be reciprocal; kamu has conventional uses such as kamu da cuta “contract a disease.”
Verbal nouns preserve the valency distinction
Continuative constructions use each member’s verbal noun. Grade 7 yields transparent -uwa forms such as taruwa, gyaruwa, kamuwa, while the transitive member follows its own verbal-noun pattern and retains its object frame.
Ma’aikatan suna taruwa a zauren yanzu.
The employees are assembling in the hall now.
Shugaban yana tara ma’aikatan a zauren yanzu.
The supervisor is gathering the employees in the hall now.
The contrast is not present versus past: both clauses are continuative. It is the lexical and valency contrast between organizer-centered tara and participant-centered taru.
Where the generalization stops
Not every intransitive has a morphologically related Grade 5 transitivizer, and not every transitive has an everyday Grade 7 partner. Hausa may instead use an unrelated verb: mutu “die” pairs semantically with kashe “kill.” Even an attested derivative may drift enough to require a dictionary gloss. Learn gaps as part of the lexicon; do not complete a paradigm by analogy.
Quick analysis exercise
For each pair, name the changing participant and the valency operation: hanyar ta faɗaɗa / gwamnati ta faɗaɗa hanyar; makulli ya ɓata / na ɓatar da makulli; ma’aikata sun taru / shugaba ya tara ma’aikata; mota ta gyaru / mai gyara ya gyara mota. Then explain why the first member of each pair cannot simply retain the second member’s direct object.
Common Mistakes
1. Keeping the direct object after an intransitive partner.
❌ Daraktan ya taru ma’aikatan sabuwar reshe.
Incorrect—taru is intransitive.
✅ Daraktan ya tara ma’aikatan sabuwar reshe.
The director gathered the employees of the new branch.
2. Treating identical spelling as identical valency.
❌ Shugaban ya fusata saƙon.
Incorrect for ‘The director became angry about the message’; the stimulus is not a direct object in that frame.
✅ Shugaban ya fusata da saƙon.
The director became angry about the message.
3. Selecting a paired grade by tense.
❌ Taru is the past form of tara.
Incorrect—the pair contrasts valency, not time.
✅ Gobe ma’aikatan za su taru da ƙarfe tara.
Tomorrow the employees will assemble at nine o’clock.
4. Assuming every verb has every partner.
❌ Every intransitive can be made causative by attaching the same ending.
Incorrect—grade membership and lexical gaps must be learned.
✅ Doki ya mutu, amma ba wanda ya kashe shi.
The horse died, but nobody killed it. (different lexical roots)
Key Takeaways
- Valency pairs reorganize participant roles: the transitive object often becomes the intransitive subject.
- Grade 1/3, Grade 1/7, and intransitive/transitivizing Grade 5 are recurring patterns, not automatic paradigms.
- Object-conditioned forms belong only to a member whose valency licenses that object.
- Same boko spelling can hide a real tonal and syntactic contrast, especially in fusata/faɗaɗa pairs.
- Learn each partner’s meaning, object frame, verbal noun, and lexicalized extensions; record gaps instead of inventing forms.
Related Topics
- Verbs with Multiple Grade MembershipC1 — Treat a Hausa root’s attested grade members as a structured lexical family, not as free conjugational cells generated by one universal meaning formula.
- Grade 3 and Change of StateB2 — Use Grade 3's strong change-of-state tendency without mistaking it for a universal meaning or a productive English-style derivation.
- Grade 5 Causatives: OverviewB2 — Understand Grade 5 as an all-high transitive extension with causative, transfer, and outward-result meanings—not a universal translation of English make.
- Grade 7 IntransitivityB2 — Use Grade 7 only with an affected or participating subject, distinguishing direct objects from licensed prepositional complements and adjuncts.
- The Three Object EnvironmentsA2 — Choose Hausa verb forms by whether no object, a noun direct object, or a direct-object pronoun immediately follows, while treating indirect objects separately.
- Indirect Objects Immediately after the VerbA2 — Place Hausa recipients and beneficiaries directly after the verb and recognize the special D-form environment they create.