Sereer Grammar

This is the Wiki page for Sereer.

Sereer a language of the Senegambian branch of Niger–Congo spoken by 1.2 million people in Senegal and 30,000 in The Gambia. It is the principal language of the Serer people.

Getting started

The handout provided by MediaWiki is below:

• MediaWiki Handbook

In addition to the handbook, a great way to learn how to format Wiki is by poking around Wikipedia, looking for interesting ideas, and clicking the edit button next to them. This is how I figured out how to create sortable lists, for example.

Another question is how we will generate interlinear glosses. The table environment is probably our best bet. This is how most LaTeX glossing packages work.

Ancillary pages

• Serer lexicon

• Recordings and transcriptions

Upload recordings and annotations here.

• Individual session wordlists

This is where wordlists for individual elicitation sessions can be uploaded and checked to avoid redundant work.

Phonology

Main article: Phonological Inventory

Consonants

A tentative consonant inventory of Serer:

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	V'less	p	t	c~ʧ	k	q	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
Glide		ʋ~β̞~w		j

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.

Plural marker χa- (supposing that it is a separate morpheme) seems to attract stress in some instances (e.g. aˈlas "tail", ˈχalas "tails").

Spectrograms and Audio Samples of Consonants

Phonological Alternations

Phonotactics

Serer allows C and nC onsets and codas (if one assumes that nC onsets are not single segments, as they are in the table of phonemes above). Syllables without onsets and open syllables are also allowed. Medial CC clusters are allowed, but no CCC clusters are yet attested.

It seems that syllable structure is strictly (C)V(C). Any C can be an onset, and so far it appears that any C can be a coda.

Loanword Phonology

Borrowed words show phonemes that are not normally present in Serer, like /y/, in the word borrowed from French for 'wall' (etc).

Morphology

Nominal Morphology

Nouns can be divided into patterns (classes/genders?):

Noun types!

Gloss	Noun (sg.)	Definite article	Noun (pl.)	Definite article	Adjective Prefix
Fence	a-ɗiŋg	a-ɗiŋg-alɛ	a-ɗiŋg	a-ɗiŋg-akɛ
Elephant	0-faɲiik	0-faɲiik-fɛ	(a-)paɲiik	(a-)paɲiik-kɛ
Cat	0-muus	0-muus-nɛ	0-muus	0-muus-kɛ
Horn	o-ɟan	o-ɟan-olɛ	ha-can	ha-can-ahɛ
Tongue	0-ɗɛlɛm	0-ɗɛlɛm-lɛ	a-ƭɛlɛm	a-ƭɛlɛm-akɛ
Stove	0-ⁿdɛn	0-ⁿdɛn-nɛ

Verbal Morphology

Tense (and aspect) Paradigm Table

Syntax

Question formation

Sentences with sound files

Prepositions

Position in Sereer is indicated with prepositions. Currently, it's not clear if all these prepositions can be used verbally. Some can, i.e. ɟof no taχarkɛ "towards the trees" and mɛhɛ ɟofaa "I am going toward (something)".

Preposition	Gloss	Example Sentence
pam	by, next to, near	pam ⁿdaχarnɛ "by the tree"
acinᶮɟ	behind	acinᶮɟ ᵐbinɛ "behind the house"
ⁿdɛɛr	amidst, between, surrounded by	ⁿdɛɛr taχarkɛ "amidst the trees"
ⁿdɛɛⁿdɛr	between, in the between	ⁿdɛɛⁿdɛr taχarkɛ "between the (two) trees"
non	at	non ⁿdaχarnɛ "at the tree"
ɗoχaᵑɡ, ɗoχaŋ	under	ɗoχaᵑɡ ᵐbaɟnɛ "under the blanket"
ɟof, ɟofin, ɟofna	toward	ɟofna noqololɛ "toward the field"
mɛmaʔna	near to	mɛˈmaʔna ⁿdaχarnɛ "close to the tree"
mɛgotna	far from	mɛgotna ⁿdaχarnɛ "far from the tree"

Old Pages

- Bari grammar (old main page) - Recordings and transcriptions (Bari) - Bari lexicon