ABSTRACT
Fula is an accentual and aspectual subject-verb-object (SVO) language. The morphology of its nominal and verbal systems is said to be remarkably complex. The verbal system includes three voices, active, passive and middle and each of these voices can be conjugated in fifteen different tenses. This chapter aims at showing, through a lexical analysis of the class markers, that the nominal phonology and morphology of Fula, at least of Pulaar, are much less complex and arbitrary than they appear to be. Whereas verb-initial alternations are conditioned by personal pronouns (singular/plural), noun-initial alternations are conditioned by class markers. The class markers can be divided into three groups according to their influence on a stem-initial consonant: Effect 1 markers, which trigger occlusivization, but not prenasalization; Effect 2 markers, which trigger both occlusivization and prenasalization of the consonant and neutral markers, which have no effect at all.
