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'

I would argue, however, that we is not in fact an independent word but a clitic to a phonologically fuller word (Faytak). See Word Minimality below.

Consonant Clusters

There are no onset or coda clusters. Consonant clusters do occur across syllable boundaries; as a consequence of maximal syllable structure, these are limited to C.C sequences.

Vowel Hiatus

Vowel hiatus does not occur in Sereer and is clearly resolved through some variety of mechanisms, including vowel coalescence, vowel deletion, and complete assimilation. The last two factors, in particular, appear to be mediated both by phonotactic factors and by morphological factors that decide in some way which vowel overrides which other vowel. This is especially the case in the inflectional verbal morphology, and perhaps should be further studied in this context when the forces at play are more thoroughly understood.

Word minimality

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

• CV(V)C
• CVCV(V)C

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 words 'do', often transcribed as fi, and 'fruit', which has been transcribed as o-bi, seem to form exceptions to this generalization, but it seems feasible to interpret these as fiy and biy respectively. 'Do' has also been noted to be realized as fi' when followed by inflectional morphology in certain cases.

Thus, the lexical evidence points to the minimal word in Sereer as being CVC, which happens to match the maximal syllable CVC (as might be expected). Numerous shorter units, of the forms V(V) and CV(V), occur outside of the verbal morphology complex, but these have typically been analyzed as clitics rather than as independent words.