Inflectional Verbal Morphology
This basic description and an example of the basic inflectional paradigm below should be moved to the main page.
Sereer inflectional morphology includes affixes, proclitics, and auxilliary verbs.
Isn't inflectional morphology by definition a bound morpheme on an host of a particular category? Does that hold for all of these cases?
Subject and object marking is obligatory on verbs. Subject marking is usually prefixal, while objects suffixal.
This gives one the impression that object marking is agreement morphology: in fact it is not obligatory, but only occurs with pronominal objects. This should be clarified. Ideally the object pronoun paradigms should be included in a separate page.
Either tense or aspect must be marked on verbs that are not in citation form, but not both. Tenses are verb suffixes, while aspect marking consists of clitics, or an auxiliary verb which come before the main verb root.
Present Tense
Sample present-tense verbal paradigm:
| Gloss | Sereer | Gloss | Sereer |
|---|---|---|---|
| I ... | -aam | we ... | i-[mut]-a |
| you ... | -aa | you (pl) ... | nu-[mut]-a |
| s/he ... | -a | they ... | a-[mut]-a |
Stem-initial consonant mutation
See also Nominal morphology for the similar phenomenon in nouns.
Verb stems undergo a stem-initial consonant mutation as a form of inflection for plural subject. Only initial consonants that can mutate actually do mutate; some never appear to mutate (e.g. /j/, /m/, /n/). Verbs intended as plurals that do not show a distinct plural allomorph are often disambiguated from singular forms with the addition of a suffix (or clitic?) -jo.
The mutation follows one of two "tracks", depending on whether or not the stem-initial consonant is an implosive. Note that these mutations are simplified relative to the nominal stem-initial consonat mutations.
The non-implosive "track":
- (sg) continuants --> (pl) prenasalized stop, e.g. weʄ --> mbeʄ 'to swim' (022)
- (sg) voiceless oral stop, non-implosive --> (pl) prenasalized stop (not well-attested, few verbs with initial voiceless stops)
- (sg) voiced oral stop, non-implosive --> (pl) prenasalized stop, disooχ --> ndisooχ 'to sneeze' (029)
The implosive "track":
- (sg) voiced implosive stop --> (pl) voiceless implosive stop, e.g. ɗok --> ƭok 'to grind' (047)
