Abstract
This study examines modifier placement in English and Fulfulde languages. The paper is motivated by the fact that comparative syntax necessarily involves work on more than one language. It attempts to characterise and delineate the parameters that ultimately underlie cross-linguistic differences in syntax. Although the present study is simply a descriptive one, it serves as a significant resource and gives an input to descriptive analysis. This work explores modification in English and Fulfulde, taking into cognisance their distribution, forms and functions, their syntactic properties and the position they occupy in the languages. This study sources its data from primary and secondary sources. The primary source was of self-introspection which was indispensable owing to the fact that the researcher is a native speaker of Fulfulde and the secondary source is made up of materials drawn from existing documents. This study reveals that Fulfulde nominal modifications do not occur in pre-position but the adjectives in the language do occur. However, English nominal modifications do not occur in the attributive position but the adjectives in the language do occur in both predicative and attributive positions. They always follow the noun head they modify and exhibit an agreement property in both languages.
Keywords: Modifier Placement, Nominal Head, Head Noun, Syntactic Properties.
