Predication Strategies

This section will discuss predication as is particularly relevant to adjectives and other modifiers. Sereer heavily favors verbal predication - most adjectives are derived from verbs, and stative verbs serve to express many of the meaning commonly expressed cross-linguistically with adjectives. Additionally, Sereer exhibits a complex system of copularization; there are for distinct copulas markers, each of which have a distinct functional load.

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. The following table represents a sampling of inflectional and derivational forms associated with verbs, and illustrates the broad range of predicate types each of these can be used with:

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It is worth noting that, for special derived adjectives such as ciig/jigid/jigdu ‘be tall’, it is the adjectival derived form (jig(i)d, yax(i)g, etc.) which is most often used in typical verbal inflection paradigms (rather than the root forms ciig, ɓaal, etc).

The way in which a verb with negative derivational morphology -eer in the table above can become an adjective is exemplary for the way all derived verbs, stative and regular, can take adjectival and verbal morphology. For instance, in the first example, the verb 'be spicy' has one layer of derivational morphology, and in the second example, the verb 'be brave' has two layers, before each becomes an -u adjective:

 ñaay   -->  ñaayeer --> oɓiy oñaayeeru le                   'the not-spicy fruit'
 sad    -->  sadar   --> sadarnoox --> okoong osadarnooxu    'the scary gorilla'

Copular predication

Sereer exhibits four distinct copulas. The most common copula is ref, which marks predicational and specificational copular clauses, with locational and nominal complements.

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Ref is a verb that frequently acts as copula, and works in both predicational and specificational clauses. With a specificational clause, the specified role-filler follows the verb:

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll oxe adooxan na USA a- ref -a Obama pro leader Part USA 3sg is 3sg Obama \trans The president of the USA is Obama. </gl>

With predicational clauses, it can either provide neutral focus by acting as a verb (2), or marked focus by acting as an adjective (3):

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll oɓoxole a- ref -a ɓaal fo tan sg-Cl 3sg is 3sg black and white \trans The dog is black and white. </gl>

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll Obama ref -u oxe adooxan na USA Obama is Adj pro leader Part USA \trans Obama is the president of the USA. </gl>

(Note: na here is not the relative pronoun, but the partitive preposition. See Noun Modification with -u for more.)

Interestingly, because ref is a stative verb, it can itself become an adjective (3). (That is, it can take -u suffix and appear in the same N-adj ordering relation as all other 'adjectives'). When ref takes the form of an -u adjective, this creates an information-structurally marked clause, whereby the noun it 'modifies' is cleft-like or somehow focused. The sentence above is better translated as: 'Obama is the one who is president.' Ref is thus the ultimate attribute verb in Sereer.

This works well with predicational clauses because if an adjective in Sereer is a derived word that attributes something to a noun, then 'refu' attributes a certain property to Obama: 'Obama has the property of being (the one who is the president).'

Focus can also be achieved an emphatic surfacing of the subject pronoun:

 mi, o caajang ref-um      'I am a student.'
 wo, o caajang ref-o       'You are a student.'
 ten, o caajang aref-u     'He is a student.'
 ino, jaajang indef-u      'We are students.'
 nuuno, jaajang nundef-u   'We are students.'
 deno, jaajang andef-u     'They are students.'

The latter points to a second verbal paradigm reserved for the ref copula when it appears in predication with a noun. When it does so, the noun precedes the verb, whereas when the predicate is verbal or prepositional, it follows ref:

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll a- ref -a koƭu koƭu 3sg is 3sg far Adj far Adj \trans He is far away. </gl>

This paradigm is available only to ref by virtue of it being the only verb that can predicate nominally (unless we see all instances of -u modification of nouns, (i.e., typical adjectives) as the same type of predication as this). The paradigms are:

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In the following 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):

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll wum ndefu we yaxig na Wh are Det red Rel \trans Which are the ones that are red? </gl>

When appearing in wh- constituent questions, ref must follow the syntactic pattern in (3), which is focused (that is, it must be an adjectival form inside a noun phrase). This makes sense for wh- constituent questions, which ask for new information regarding the identity of the referent inquired after with 'wum', and therefore these questions are focal in nature.

In the next example, it's clear that ref can take the full range of modifier morphology, including na-modification, which is another type of clefting strategy, in addition to the one described above, but this time via relativization:

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll fañiik fe ref na ondeb elephant Det is Rel small \trans The elephant that is small </gl>

Kam is another copula, but is more of an existential one as opposed to ref, with a meaning more akin to 'is being V/Adj/PP'. It is also the auxiliary used in the present progressive, kam moofa 'I am sitting'). Sometimes, it can even combine with ref:

<gl id="Specificational" fontsize=12> \gll kam ref(u) oxa ʄiʄ na Cop is pro clever Rel \trans I am someone who is clever. </gl>

In this sentence the person-inflected kam acts as the main verb in the clause(i.e., 'I am...') while ref provides the attribution of a property (i.e., '...am someone who is clever').

Existential particle -o

Sometimes with pure nominal predicates, the particle -o is used instead of a copula, and predication occurs simply by the subject and predicative noun plus the copular particle:

<gl id="ex2" fontsize=12> \gll Kayla o tew o. Kayla sg-Cl woman Pcl \trans Kayla is a woman. </gl>

The meaning is equivalent to a version of this substituting the particle for a verbal form of ref:

<gl id="ex2" fontsize=12> \gll Kayla o tew a- ref -u. Kayla sg-Cl woman 3sg is 3sg \trans Kayla is a woman. </gl>

Oana 05:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)