Grammaticalization of some Postpositional Enclitics in Kanuri written Texts

This paper examines strategies and concepts of postpositional clitics in Kanuri. clitics in Kanuri within the broad framework of descriptive linguistics. The study adopts the works of Zwicky and Pullum (1983), Anderson (2005) and Spencer and Luis (2012) as its analytic models. The primary sources of data collection are Kanuri written texts: Sǝmonǝm wuro sarugǝsǝne by Norbert Cyffer and Nyariwa Kanuribe by Shettima Bukar Abba and John Hutchison. These two texts are collection of stories written in the yerwa dialect of Kanuri. All the various places where the postpositional particles –ro, -lan,-ma and -ga occurred are identified and extracted for presentation and analysis. The outcome of the study reveals that these particles can be encliticized to lexical words in Kanuri to express different functions.  These particles –ro, lan, ga and ma virtually attach to every grammatical categories of words in Kanuri i.e. nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs to express different functions while the Emphatic =ma can be used as focus marker in Kanuri.