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).

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.