Grade 7 often builds a result or limiting-point interpretation into the lexical verb: soyu presents food as having fried well, gyaru presents something as repaired or improved, and sayu presents goods as successfully bought or sold. That semantic tendency must be kept separate from three other notions: whether the event has actually occurred, whether the clause uses completive TAM, and whether every member of a set has been affected.
The grades-versus-TAM guide supplies the larger contrast between lexical verb shape and preverbal aspect marking.
All unlabelled examples are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa). Ordinary boko does not mark tone or vowel length. Technically, Grade 7 has a low…high melody and short final -u. It is always intransitive, so the participant realizing the result is its subject.
A result belongs to the lexical event
With a clear pair, the basic verb names an actor’s action and Grade 7 names the affected participant’s result or disposition.
Amina ta soya naman a kan ƙaramar wuta.
Amina fried the meat over low heat. (transitive action)
Naman ya soyu sosai, bai ƙone ba.
The meat fried very well; it did not burn. (successful Grade 7 result)
Mai gyara ya gyara motar cikin kwana biyu.
The mechanic repaired the car in two days. (agent-centered action)
Motar ta gyaru bayan an canja fanfon mai.
The car returned to working order after the fuel pump was replaced. (Grade 7 result)
The result is not a separate suffix meaning English already. It is part of what the Grade 7 lexical choice contributes: the subject has undergone or is capable of sustaining the relevant action. This explains why sayu often translates naturally as “sell”: the goods reach the market result of finding buyers.
Sabbin takalman sun sayu da sauri saboda farashinsu bai yi tsada ba.
The new shoes sold quickly because their price was not high.
Result does not equal completive TAM
Grade 7 can appear in a clause whose result lies in the future, occurs habitually, or is merely conditional. The final -u therefore cannot be a completive or past-tense ending.
| TAM frame | Example | Status of the result |
|---|---|---|
| completive | Motar ta gyaru jiya. | the repair result is presented as realized |
| future | Motar za ta gyaru gobe. | the result is projected, not yet asserted |
| habitual | Irin wannan matsala takan gyaru. | a recurring disposition |
| completive form in a conditional protasis | Idan motar ta gyaru, mu tafi. | the result is hypothetical under idan; mu tafi is the subjunctive directive |
Motar za ta gyaru idan kayan aikin sun iso da wuri.
The car will return to working order if the parts arrive early.
Irin wannan kuskure yakan gyaru idan an sake kunna na’urar.
This kind of error usually gets resolved when the device is restarted.
Idan motar ta gyaru yau, mu kama hanya da sassafe.
If the car is repaired today, let us set out very early.
Only the first row straightforwardly asserts a realized occurrence. All rows retain the same Grade 7 affected-result lexeme.
Completive TAM does not come from the verb ending
In motar ta gyaru, the feminine singular marker ta contributes completive TAM; gyaru contributes the Grade 7 lexical event. In kayan sun sayu, sun contributes completive TAM and plural agreement; sayu supplies the successful-disposition meaning.
Kayan sun sayu kafin azahar.
The goods sold before noon. (completive sun + Grade 7 sayu)
Kayan za su sayu idan an rage farashin.
The goods will sell if the price is reduced. (future za su + the same Grade 7 verb)
An English learner may see a passive-like translation and attribute “was” to -u. That analysis fails in the future. Hausa TAM is primarily expressed before the verb; the Grade 7 ending does not change from past to future.
Thoroughness is a strong tendency, not an entailment for every verb
Grade 7 is sometimes called resultative, sustentative, or affected-subject. With soyu, a successful and thorough result is prominent. With gyaru, the subject has improved or come right. But faru simply means “happen,” gamu da means “meet,” and taru means “assemble.” There is no sensible “thoroughly happen” component that must appear in every translation.
Abin da ya faru jiya ya canja shirinmu.
What happened yesterday changed our plan.
Wakilan ƙungiyoyin sun taru domin tattauna sabon tsarin.
The organizations’ representatives assembled to discuss the new system.
Na gamu da daraktan a harabar otal.
I met the director in the hotel grounds.
These are lexicalized members of the grade. Their morphology and intransitivity remain predictable, but their ordinary meanings must be memorized.
A Grade 7 result need not exhaust a whole set
The thoroughness associated with one affected item is different from quantificational totality over a plural set. Kayan sun sayu can describe the contextually relevant goods, but if it matters that every item sold, add duka or make the contrast explicit.
Wasu kayan sun sayu, wasu kuma sun rage a shagon.
Some of the goods sold, while others remained in the shop.
Kayan sun sayu duka kafin kasuwa ta rufe.
All the goods sold before the market closed.
Motar ta gyaru kaɗan, amma har yanzu tana da matsalar birki.
The car improved a little, but it still has a brake problem.
The last example is especially useful: gyaru can describe improvement on a scale. The presence of Grade 7 does not force the inference that every defect is gone. Lexical result, degree, and set exhaustivity are distinct.
Grade 7 completion differs from Grade 4 totality
Grade 4 often profiles an action reaching an endpoint or affecting an entire object, and it can be transitive. Grade 7 is categorically intransitive and profiles the affected subject or its capacity. Compare saye “buy up” with sayu “be bought/sell successfully.”
| Grade | Example | Core perspective |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 2 | ’Yan kasuwa sun sayi kayan. | buyers carry out an ordinary purchase |
| Grade 4 | ’Yan kasuwa sun saye kayan. | buyers buy the goods up / reach a total endpoint |
| Grade 7 | Kayan sun sayu. | the goods realize the result of being bought/selling |
’Yan kasuwa sun saye kayan da suka rage.
The traders bought up the remaining goods. (Grade 4 totality; transitive)
Kayan da suka rage sun sayu da yamma.
The remaining goods sold in the afternoon. (Grade 7 affected subject; intransitive)
Both clauses can describe successful sales, but they organize the participants differently. Grade labels are not interchangeable synonyms for “complete.”
The root family across object environments
The saya/sayu family makes the morphology–syntax relationship visible. Grade 7 has no direct-object B- or C-form; the buyer-centered transitive frames below require Grade 2 saya with its object-conditioned forms. Traditional descriptions may give some Grade 7 verbs a restricted pre-dative D-form before an indirect object, but that separate applicative pattern does not supply sayu with a direct-object paradigm.
| Environment | Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 7, no object | Kayan sun sayu. | The goods sold. |
| noun direct object | Kamfanin ya sayi kayan. | The company bought the goods. |
| direct-object pronoun | Kamfanin ya saye su. | The company bought them. |
| indirect object | Kamfanin ya saya mana kayan. | The company bought the goods for us. |
Kamfanin ya saye su ne bayan mun ƙi amincewa da farashin.
The company bought them after we refused to accept the price.
Do not create a noun- or pronoun-object form of sayu by changing its final vowel. Doing so selects Grade 2 saya and changes the clause from affected-subject result to buyer-centered action. The final row is likewise the natural Grade 2 expression for a company buying goods for us; it is not a D-form of Grade 7 sayu.
Verbal nouns often foreground capacity
Grade 7 normally forms a weak verbal noun in -uwa: soyuwa, gyaruwa, sayuwa. In continuative and generic environments, it often expresses a capacity, disposition, or ease of undergoing the action.
Wannan naman yana soyuwa da sauri idan man ya yi zafi sosai.
This meat fries well/quickly when the oil is very hot. (disposition)
Wannan matsalar ba ta gyaruwa da wannan hanyar.
This problem cannot be fixed by this method. (negative capacity)
Irin waɗannan kaya suna sayuwa sosai a lokacin sanyi.
Goods of this kind sell very well during the cold season. (market disposition)
The capacity reading confirms that Grade 7 is not automatically a completed event. It can characterize what an entity is suitable or liable to undergo without asserting that any particular occurrence has finished.
Practice
Separate grade meaning from TAM in these forms: ta gyaru = completive TAM + Grade 7 result; za ta gyaru = future + the same result type; takan gyaru = habitual + the same lexeme; tana gyaruwa = continuative/generic verbal-noun construction, often capacity. Then contrast sun saye kayan with kayan sun sayu by naming the subject, object status, grade, and perspective in each.
Common Mistakes
1. Treating -u as “already completed.”
❌ Ba za a iya cewa motar za ta gyaru ba, domin gyaru yana nuna abin da ya wuce.
Incorrect claim—Grade 7 combines normally with future TAM; gyaru does not itself mark past time.
✅ Motar za ta gyaru idan an samo kayan aikin.
The car will return to working order if the parts are obtained.
2. Assuming Grade 7 guarantees every member of a set is affected.
❌ Kayan sun sayu, saboda haka lallai babu abin da ya rage.
Incorrect inference without context or an explicit totality expression.
✅ Wasu kayan sun sayu, wasu kuma sun rage.
Some goods sold, while others remained.
3. Confusing Grade 4 buyer-centered totality with Grade 7 affected-subject result.
❌ Kayan sun saye.
Incorrect for ‘the goods sold’; saye here does not form a Grade 7 intransitive.
✅ Kayan sun sayu.
The goods sold.
4. Giving Grade 7 a direct object.
❌ Kamfanin ya sayu kayan.
Incorrect—sayu is intransitive and cannot take kayan as an object.
✅ Kamfanin ya sayi kayan.
The company bought the goods.
5. Forcing “thoroughly” into a lexicalized verb.
❌ Abin ya faru sosai yana nufin abin ya faru gaba ɗaya.
Incorrect claim—this mechanically forces a total-result reading onto lexicalized faru.
✅ Abin ya faru jiya da dare.
The thing happened last night.
Key Takeaways
- Grade 7 packages an affected-subject result, thoroughness, or capacity as part of lexical meaning.
- Completive, future, habitual, and conditional TAM independently determine how an occurrence is presented.
- Grade 7 does not automatically exhaust every member of a set; use duka when total set coverage matters.
- Grade 4 totality and Grade 7 result can describe related scenes from different syntactic and semantic perspectives.
- The -uwa verbal noun often supports capacity or disposition readings, proving that Grade 7 is not inherently completed or past.
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Start learning Hausa →Related Topics
- Grade 7 Resultative/Totality: OverviewB2 — Understand Grade 7 as an intransitive affected-subject pattern that often conveys a thorough result or capacity without being a passive voice or TAM marker.
- Grade 7 IntransitivityB2 — Use Grade 7 only with an affected or participating subject, distinguishing direct objects from licensed prepositional complements and adjuncts.
- Grade 7 Verbal NounsB2 — Form and use the regular -uwa verbal nouns of Grade 7 while keeping finite -u forms, noun linkers, and da-complements distinct.
- Grades versus TAMA2 — Separate a Hausa verb’s lexical grade and object-conditioned form from the preverbal markers that express tense, aspect, and mood.
- Grade 4 Semantics and Completive ForceB1 — Interpret Grade 4's endpoint, totality, and separation tendencies without confusing lexical meaning with completive TAM.
- 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.