Phonological Inventory
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Phonological inventory
Consonants
A tentative consonant inventory of Serer:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | V'less | p | t̪ | t | c | k | q | ʔ |
| Voiced | b | d | ɟ | g | ||||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | ɠ | ||||
| Voiceless Implosive | ˀƥ | ˀƭ | ˀƈ | ˀƙ | ||||
| Prenasalized | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿɟ | ⁿg | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||
| Fricative | f | s | χ | |||||
| Affricate | tʃ dʒ (?) | |||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||
| Liquid | l | |||||||
| Glide | ʋ/β̞ | j | ||||||
Vowels
A tentative vowel inventory of Serer:
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i, ɪ | u | ||||
| Mid | e, ɛ | ə | ɔ, o | |||
| Low | a | |||||
Serer also has diphthongs: aɪ, oɪ, ɔɪ.
Vowel length is contrastive.
Vowels after implosive consonants are sometimes creaky; this does not seem to be contrastive.
Suprasegmentals
Serer makes use of stress. (?) It is unclear at this point whether it is automatically/metrically assigned to words or if it is lexically specified and unpredictable. Faytak 22:19, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
Plural marker χa- (supposing that it is a separate morpheme) seems to attract stress in some instances (e.g. aˈlas "tail", ˈχalas "tails"). Faytak 01:40, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
