Inflectional Verbal Morphology

Present Tense

Sample present-tense verbal paradigm:

Present:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
I ...	-aam	we ...	i-[mut]-a
you ...	-aa	you (pl) ...	nu-[mut]-a
s/he ...	-a	they ...	a-[mut]-a

Person Marking

Subject Marking

Sereer verbs agree with subject; the following table shows the basic subject marking paradigm, which occurs when no pre-verbal morphology is present:

Basic subject marking:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
1SG	-m	1PL	i-[mut]
2SG	-'	2PL	nu-[mut]
3SG	a-	3PL	a-[mut]

Singular and plural forms for first, second, and third person are all distinguished from each other. The only distinguishing characteristic between singular and plural third person, however, is the stem-initial consonant mutation of the verb stem. Initial consonant mutation occurs with all plural subjects.

The paradigm above is one of many: type of subject agreement is conditioned (at least) by clause type, negation, focus, and presence or absence of auxiliaries. Most subject agreement morphemes within these paradigms are prefixes. Regardless of subject agreement type, all plural subjects trigger verb stem-initial consonant mutation.

When the preverbal aspect marker xe/we is present, a different subject marking paradigm occurs:

Subject marking with xe/we:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
	-xe		-we
1SG	me-	1PL	in-
2SG	we-	2PL	nuun-
3SG	a-	3PL	a-

With the auxiliary verb xan, or special preverbal clitic "kan", subject marking always occurs immediately before the verb stem:

Subject marking with xan or kan:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
1SG	-m	1PL	i-[mut]
2SG	o-	2PL	nu-[mut]
3SG	a-	3PL	a-[mut]

Object marking

Sereer object marking varies based on how the subject is marked (which in turn varies based on tense/aspect marking). When there is no pre-verbal morphology and the subject is 3S, 1P, 2P, or 3P, the 'basic' subject marking appears, which can the following objects:

Basic object marking:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
1SG	=xam	1PL	='in
2SG	=ng	2P	=nuun
3SG	=n	3P	=den

When there is basic subject marking, and the subject is 1s or 2s (which are post-verbal suffixes), the singular object marking changes:

Objects of a 1s subject:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
2SG	=xong	2P	=nuun
3SG	=num	3P	=den

Objects of a 2s subject:

Gloss	Sereer	Gloss	Sereer
1SG	=xamo	1PL	='in
3SG	=no'	3P	=den

Pronominal objects are marked by enclitics. These are in complementary distribution with full nominal objects.

Things that we need to talk about (--Nico 07:56, 30 November 2012 (UTC))

• Suffixes or clitics?

I think the singulars are suffixes (there are morphophonological interactions between them and other suffixes) and the plurals ((a)'in, (a)nuun, (a)den) are enclitics. Things can intervene between (say) aden and a verb. (a nafana aJegaan aden, "I hit them for Jegaan".) If no one argues I might find the time to implement this interpretation here. Faytak 22:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• Movement of the object markers from one verb to another (clitic climbing?)
• -xong vs. -ong, -xam vs. -um/-am, etc.

Either -x- is a first-person marker that isn't analyzable out from -xong, or it's some sort of phonologically optimizing allomorphy. Faytak 22:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Tense and aspect

Matrix verbs are obligatorily marked for either tense or aspect in Sereer, and are often marked for both. The three tense markers are suffixes:

Typical subject marking:

Gloss	Sereer
Simple past	-'a
Proximal	-aa
Progressive past	-eega

The suffix -aa is glossed as proximal tense. It marks events that happened temporally close to the speech act, which includes the present or recent past. Events outside of the recent past-present time frame cannot be marked with -aa. The future aspect when marked with xan, however, can take -aa marking to indicate future progressive.

The auxiliary verb xan can also appear by itself without any suffix aspect marking, and is glossed as the simple future.

Another auxiliary, kan, behaves similarly to xan with regards to subject marking and position relative to the verb, but whose semantic applications are quite different. So far, the best gloss of kan is as a marker of predicate focus.

The proclitic progressive aspect marker xe/we must occur with either proximal tense or progressive past tense. With proximal tense -aa, xe/we is glossed as present progressive, and is past progressive with -eega. xe/we has special person marking; see the section on subject marking.

For paradigms of tense and aspect inflection, see example verb paradigms.

Stem-initial consonant mutation

See Phonological Alternations.