A Generative Grammar Analysis of French-Hausa Code-Switching in Border Communities of Niger State

French-Hausa code-switching in the border communities of Niger State, where proximity to Niger Republic creates sustained bilingual contact, exhibits grammatical regularities that merit formal generative linguistic analysis capable of revealing the underlying structural constraints governing switching behaviour. This study conducts a generative grammar analysis of French-Hausa code-switching in three border communities of Niger State: Babban Mutum, Maradun, and Tsamiyar Shanu, drawing on the Matrix Language Frame model and Minimalist Programme to account for the syntactic architecture of switching. A fieldwork-based corpus of 24 hours of naturalistic speech was recorded over six months, with code-switched utterances extracted and transcribed using ELAN annotation software. Matrix language identification, constituent structure analysis, and island constraint testing were applied to 1,842 code-switched clauses. Results confirm Hausa as the dominant matrix language in 73% of code-switched clauses, with French functioning primarily as an embedded language contributing lexical items and prepositional phrases. Asymmetric morphological realisation, in which Hausa morphosyntax governs French-origin verb stems, was found in 89% of verbal code-switches, consistent with Matrix Language Frame predictions. Wh-extraction and relativisation asymmetries between Hausa-governed and French-governed clauses confirmed differential constraint operation in the two language systems. The study makes an original contribution to the formal grammar of French-Hausa bilingualism and to generative accounts of code-switching in Niger-Congo and Chadic language contact. Keywords: code-switching, generative grammar, French-Hausa, Niger State, Matrix Language Frame