Difference between revisions of "Phonological Alternations"
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Revision as of 20:12, 2 October 2012
Phonological Alternations
Morphophonology
Sereer has salient alternations in the initial consonants of noun and verb stems. These alternations appear to be morphologically conditioned in a lexically specified manner, since they occur in several different segmental contexts whose only common element is being within a morphologically derived environment (e.g. plurality in both nouns and verbs; addition of apparent nominalizing suffixes to verbs).
Nouns
Verbs
The initial consonant of verb roots can vary based on whether the subject is singular or plural. Non-implosives alternate with prenasalized stops, and implosives alternate with their voiceless counterparts. So far, these alternations appear to be completely predictable.
sg.~pl.
f~mb
b~mb
w~mb
ɉ~ɲɉ
χ~ɴɢ
ɗ~ƭ
ɓ~ƥ
ʄ~ƈ
Invariant:
j~j
l~l
m~m
n~n
ŋ~ŋ
ɲ~ɲ
We still need to get the sg vs. pl. forms of verbs starting with:
t
d
p
r
s
q
c
k
g
ʔ, or vowel initial
It seems that verb roots (as seen with singular subjects) cannot start with voiceless implosives or prenasalized stops.