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.
Add more information here about 1) basic typological properties of Sereer 2) the dialect of Sereer that we are using, and 3) who we are (i.e. the 2012-2013 FM class at UCB).
Ancillary pages
List monomorphemic lexical items and associated information here.
Upload recordings and annotations here.
Backup and download the FLEx files here.
This is where wordlists for individual elicitation sessions can be uploaded and checked to avoid redundant work.
Upload completed class presentations here.
Find code here to make things (tables, interlinear glosses) on the Wiki.
Phonology
Main article: Phonological Inventory
Phonological Inventory
Consonants
A tentative consonant inventory of Sereer Saalum is given below. Working orthography for a given symbol is indicated in parentheses following a symbol if the orthography differs from the IPA.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | V'less | p | t | c~ʧ (c) | k | q | ʔ (') |
| Voiced | b | d | ɟ~ʤ (j) | g | |||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | ||||
| Voiceless Implosive | ƥ | ƭ | ƈ | ||||
| Prenasalized | ᵐb (mb) | ⁿd (nd) | ᶮɟ (nj) | ᵑg (ng) | ᶰɢ (nq) | ||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ (ñ) | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | f | s | χ~h (x) | ||||
| Tap/Trill | ɾ~r (r) | ||||||
| Liquid | l | ||||||
| Glide | ʋ~β̞~w (w) | j (y) | |||||
Spectrograms and Audio Samples of Consonants
Vowels
A tentative vowel inventory of Sereer Saalum is given below. Orthographic versions of vowels are given in parentheses.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ~ ɪ (i) | u ~ ʊ (u) | ||||
| Mid | e ~ ɛ (e) | ɔ ~ o (o) | ||||
| Low | a~ə (a) | |||||
Vowel length is contrastive; all vowels have long versions.
Vowels after implosive consonants are sometimes creaky; this does not seem to be contrastive.
Phonological Alternations
Text here
Loanword Phonology
Borrowed words show phonemes that are not normally present in Serer, like /y/ in [myr] 'wall' (Fr. mur), or /ʃ/ in [maʃin] 'machine, device' (Fr. machine).
Phonotactics
(Text here, or perhaps all of the phonotactics page can simply be included in the main sketch? Note, though, that the phonotactics page should have examples)
Stress
Serer makes use of stress. Stress is largely assigned metrically, with a preference for left-anchored iambs (if V-shaped prefixes are taken to be part of the noun's phonological word) or right-anchored trochees (if they are not). Some irregularities, especially concerning the frequent noun plural agreement prefix xa-, are yet to be worked out.
Morphology
All of the sections below here eventually need some basic text. You can wait to do your m-sketches, but having text here will eventually be essential.
Nominal Morphology
Noun classes and number
Nominal modifiers
Determiners and demonstratives
Verbal Morphology
Agreement
Inflectional Verbal Morphology
Tense and aspect
Tense (and aspect) Paradigm Table
Derivational morphology
Derivational Verbal Morphology
Syntax
Word order
main clause word order and pronominalization
Verb phrases
Valence patterns and alignment
Copular clauses and other copula-like things
Sentences with sound files Ignore these for now, I will relocate them. -- Oana 136.152.188.149 20:36, 23 October 2012 (UTC) Who is "I"? Faytak 23:24, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
Noun phrases
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)
Adjectives and Adverbs
Adpositions
Negation
Mood
Subordination
Texts
File:121011G 067 Sereer time anecdote.wav
Other Pages
- MediaWiki Handbook - Bari grammar (old main page) - Recordings and transcriptions (Bari) - Bari lexicon
