TECHNICAL NOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF NE/CE SENTENCES

Hausa is unusual among its sister Chadic languages in having an overt copula, i.e. ne or ce. Most Chadic languages form identificational sentences by juxtaposing the subject noun and the predicate noun with no further marking. "Old Hausa" undoubtedly did the same, a fact which is still evident in many fixed and presumably archaic expressions, especially proverbs such as the following, where there is no ne or ce.

Tambarin talaka cikinsa. Sarautar Allah kare a bakin zomo. Amfanin abin ado d'aurawa. Gwanin dokin wanda yake kansa. Wutsiyar tsaka mai gautsi.

'The drum of a commoner is his belly.' 'The reign of Allah is a dog in a hare's mouth.' 'The use of finery is the wearing (of it).' 'The expert horseman is the one who's on it.' 'The tail of a gecko is a fragile thing.'

Ne and ce have their origin in the demonstrative system, and Hausa still uses related elements in demonstrative-like functions, e.g. possessives such as na-sa 'his' (that-of-him) referring to a masculine thing, ta-sa 'his' (that-of-him) referring to a feminine thing. (In Western dialects of Hausa, the copula is actually na and ta rather than ne and ce.) While it is not entirely clear how the demonstratives became copulas, it undoubtedly started with identificational sentences like 'my book is this one', with eventual weakening in the meaning of the demonstrative until it came to be simply a marker of an identificational sentence.