Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

Sereer Saluum has a CV(V)(C) syllable template. The minimal Sereer syllable is a consonant followed by a vowel, and the maximal syllable is a long vowel preceded by one consonant and followed by one consonant. Length of the vowel is completely independent of the presence of a coda. Examples of these syllable types are shown below:

• CV: we def.pl.oxe/we
• CVV: saa.te 'village'
• CVC: jik 'buy'
• CVVC: xoox 'cultivate'

Consonant Clusters

There are no onset or coda clusters. Consonant clusters do occur across syllable boundaries, but here they are limited to

Word minimality

There is currently a limited number of verb root shapes attested. They are:

• CV(V)
• CV(V)C
• CVCV(V)C

Verbs, however, always have some added phonological material when they are spoken naturally (e.g., /bug/ "love" is never CVC *bug, but is at least bugaam "I love", etc).

Noun stems have the attested shapes (minus noun class/gender markers, of the shape (C)V-). Note that no noun stem attested so far has fewer than two consonants in its stem.

• CV(V)C
• CV(V)CV
• CV(V)CV(V)C(V) etc.

The evidence thus far points to the minimal word in Sereer as being CVC, which happens to match the maximal syllable CVC (as might be expected). More investigation is needed on this point, however.