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	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.

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

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

Negation of a noun is indicated by the free morphology word [ɟɛgɛ]. It's unclear if this element can function verbally or if it can only negate nouns.

Verbal Morphology

Tense (and aspect) Paradigm Table

Syntax

Question formation

Sentences with sound files

Possession

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

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)".

Gloss	Adposition	Example Sentence
by, next to, near	pam	pam ⁿdaχarnɛ "by the tree"
behind	acinᶮɟ	acinᶮɟ ᵐbinɛ "behind the house"
amidst/between/surrounded by/inside	ⁿdɛɛr	ⁿdɛɛr taχarkɛ "amidst the trees"
between, in the middle between	ⁿdɛɛⁿdɛr	ⁿdɛɛⁿdɛr taχarkɛ "between the (two) trees"
at	non	non ⁿdaχarnɛ "at the tree"
under	ɗoχaᵑɡ, ɗoχaŋ	ɗoχaᵑɡ ᵐbaɟnɛ "under the blanket"
toward	ɟof, ɟofin, ɟofna	ɟofna noqololɛ "toward the field"
near to	mɛmaʔna	mɛˈmaʔna ⁿdaχarnɛ "close to the tree"
far from	mɛgotna	mɛgotna ⁿdaχarnɛ "far from the tree"
behind	kaˈtaa
around	kɛʋidna
outside	ˈtafil
inside, in	kam
over/above/on	tok
in front of	ᵐbaaᵐbir

Old Pages

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