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

Attested patterns of singular ~ plural alternations in nouns (along with prefix change):

Singular	Plural
1	mb	p	nd	t	ng	k, q

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a-mb p a-nd t

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o-k g o-t d

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f p

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f a-p

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r a-t d a-t ɗ a-ɗ̥ ɓ a-ɓ̥

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ɔ-g a-k ɔ-ɟ a-c

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o-mb xa-p o-ŋg xa-q

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ɔ-f xa-p o-x xa-k

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ɔ-ɓ xa-ɓ̥ ɔ-d xa-t

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ɔ-r xa-t

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