Predication Strategies

This section will discuss predication as is particularly relevant to adjectives and other modifiers. A discussion of copular clauses is required.

The following is a table with a variety of verbs, both regular and stative, and some that lexically encode meanings prototypically adjectival (such as 'be a lot'):

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All tense and aspect inflections are available to stative verbs. For instance, the present progressive mexe V-aa can be used with any of the above.

Copular predication with ka- or ref

Ref is a verb that frequently acts as an existential copula, and works in both predicational and specificational clauses.

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> Obama refu oxe adooxan na USA. \gll Obama refu oxe adooxan na USA Obama is-adj Pro leader over/among USA \trans Obama is the president of the USA. </gl>

Interestingly, because it is a stative verb, as the sentence above illustrates it can itself become an adjective-type (that is, it can take -u suffix and appear in the same N-adj ordering relation as all other 'adjectives'). Which works well with specificational clauses because if an adjective in Sereer is a word that attributes something to a noun, then 'refu' attributes the existential property to Obama: 'Obama has the property of being...'

Alternatively, in the following example, ref acts as a regular verb with regular first person inflection:

 refaam oxa ʄiʄ na
 ‘I am a clever one’

In predicational clauses, 'ref' becomes more verb-like:

 mi, o caajang refum      'I am a student.'
 wo, o caajang refo       'You are a student.'
 ten, o caajang arefu     'He is a student.'
 ino, jaajang indefu      'We are students.'
 nuuno, jaajang nundefu   'We are students.'
 deno, jaajang andefu     'They are students.'

However, in this example involving a wh-question ref is an adjective modifying the generic (that is, noun-class-indeterminate) wh-pronoun wum (see the section on Questions for more on wh-pronouns):

 wum ndefu we yaxigna
 ‘Which are the ones that are red?’

In the next example, it's clear that ref can take the full range of modifier morphology, including na-modification:

 fañiik fe refna ondeb	
 ‘the elephant that is small’

 kam ref oxa ʄiʄ na
 ‘I am someone who is clever’

Oana 05:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)