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 Sereer people.

Getting started

The handbook provided by MediaWiki is below:

• MediaWiki Handbook

Ancillary pages

• Serer lexicon

List monomorphemic lexical items and associated information here.

• 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.

• Class presentations

Upload completed class presentations here.

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	ᶰɢ
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 ~ ʊ
Mid			e ~ ɛ		ɔ ~ o
Low				a~ə

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.

Spectrograms and Audio Samples of Consonants

Phonological Alternations

Phonotactics

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

Verbal Morphology

Tense (and aspect) Paradigm Table

Inflectional Verbal Morphology

Derivational Verbal Morphology

Syntax

Questions

Imperatives

Sentences with sound files

Word Order

Word order in possessive constructions appears to be possessum-possessor, as seen in [muusnɛ noⁿdɛboᵑgɛ] 'a boy's cat' (040).

N-Adj order, as in [ino fop] 'all of us' (054), and [muus fodadaru] 'clumsy cat' (068)

Adpositions

Position in Sereer is mostly 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)".

Gloss	Aposition		Position	Source			Notes, Example Sentences
at	onga		posposed to N	JM_021, VW_068			temporal
behind/after	aciⁿɉ			JM_021, VW_040			acinᶮɟ ᵐbinɛ "behind the house"
amidst/between/surrounded by/inside	ⁿdɛɛr			VW_024			ⁿdɛɛr taχarkɛ "amidst the trees"
between, in the middle between (2 things)	ⁿdɛɛrⁿdɛr			VW_024			ⁿdɛɛⁿdɛr taχarkɛ "between the (two) trees"
in front of	ᵐbaaᵐbir			JM_021, VW_054
over/above/on/up	tok			JM_021, VW_040			used also as adv. "up"
under	ɗoχang	ɗoχaᵑɡ, ɗoχaŋ		JM_021			ɗoχaᵑɡ ᵐbaɟnɛ "under the blanket"
in/inside	kam			JM_021, VW_040
near/by/next to	paam	pam		JM_021, VW_040			pam ⁿdaχarnɛ "by the tree"
behind	ka'taa			VW_040
around	kɛˈʋidna			VW_040
outside	ˈtafil			VW_040			also N "outside"
inside/in between/in the middle	a'ndeer			JM_012, VW_040
at	non			VW_024			non ⁿdaχarnɛ "at the tree"
toward	ɟof, ɟofin, ɟofna			VW_024			ɟofna noqololɛ "toward the field"
near to	mɛmaʔna			VW_024			mɛˈmaʔna ⁿdaχarnɛ "close to the tree"
far from	mɛgotna			VW_024
to	mɛna, mɛn			VW_054
at	n-			VW_054			eg. noboχolɛ "at the dog"
with	fo			VW_054			fo ɟapil "with the knife", fo otɛo "with the woman"
before	bala			VW_054
from	χatna no-			VW_068
from	inoorna no-			VW_068
during	anaᵑga			VW_068
during	yɛtɛ			VW_068
during/in	na			VW_068
until	botɛ			VW_068
until	bona			VW_068
until	booyaatɛ			VW_068
in front of	adoχ			VW_038 (JH_039)			derived from "leader" N

Texts

File:121011G 067 Sereer time anecdote.wav

Old Pages

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