Phonological Inventory

Phonological inventory

Consonants

A tentative consonant inventory of Serer:

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	V'less	p	t	c~ʧ	k		ʔ
	Voiced	b	d	ɟ~ʤ	g
	Implosive	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ
	Voiceless Implosive	ƥ	ƭ	ƈ
	Prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮɟ	ᵑg
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative		f	s			χ~h
Tap/Trill			ɾ~r
Liquid			l
Implosive lateral			ɗl
Glide		ʋ~β̞~w		j

Notes:

• The modal voice palatal stops tend to be pronounced as affricates word initially, and stops elsewhere. The implosive palatal stops do not exhibit this alternation.
• /r/ can be pronounced as either a tap/flap, or a trill. In slower or more careful speech, the trill is more likely to surface.
• The labial glide is not exactly [w], but there may in fact be velar co-articulation. Note that in certain morpho-phonological alternations, /w/ and /k/ pattern together, as well as /w/, /b/ and /p/.
• The back fricative /χ/ is alternately pronounced as [χ] or [h]. In quicker speech, [h] is more likely to surface, with [χ] being the more common allophone in slower or more careful speech.
• In quick speech, the prenasalized stop /ɲɟ/ is often pronounced as [ɲj].
• /k/ often has a backed allophone [q] in the presence of the vowels /a/ or /o/.
• The voiceless (non-implosive) stops are pronounced as alternately aspirated, unaspirated, or lightly ejective. The conditioning environments for this allophony are not yet completely clear.
• Initially (and of course medially), the voiced stops are fully voiced, with voicing and closure being essentially simultaneous.
• Voiced stops (implosive, modal, and prenasalized) undergo some degree of word- or phrase-final devoicing in quick speech. Tentatively, this does not seem to cause complete devoicing, avoiding neutralization with the voiceless stops.

Minimal Pairs

Possible near pairs:

word	gloss
ˈtadikʰ	three
ⁿdiitˈ	bird

word	gloss
χɔɔχ	to cultivate
χɔχ	head

word	gloss
famb	drum
faaɓ	frog

word	gloss
fidɛl	fire
ˈʔambɛ:l	lake

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)