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'):
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)
