Adverbs

The positioning of adverbs in the sentence is as flexible in Sereer as in English, as examples (1) to (4) show:

<gl id="ex1" fontsize=12> \gll gim -am apaax / tok sing 1sg very / a-lot \trans I sing loudly </gl>

<gl id="ex2" fontsize=12> \gll appax / tok gim -am very / a-lot sing 1sg \trans loudly I sing loudly </gl>

<gl id="ex3" fontsize=12> \gll nang -am weʄ -a legleg habitual 1sg swim INF sometimes \trans I swim often </gl>

<gl id="ex4" fontsize=12> \gll legleg nang -am weʄ -a sometimes habitual 1sg swim INF \trans often I swim </gl>

When adverbs modify adjectives, they can come before or after the verb phrase, but cannot intervene between the stative verb and bare adjective with those adjectives that have a verb-adjective form, like balig 'black':

 oɓoxole fop aɓalga ɓalig
 oɓoxole aɓalga ɓalig fop
 *oɓoxole aɓalga fop ɓalig
 'The dog is completely black.'

The adverb fop can also mean 'both':

 okoor fo o tew fop a ƈiʄ 
 ‘the boy and girl all are smart’

The most remarkable think about adverbs in Sereer is that, like adjectives, there is a group of words that can serve adverbial, adjectival and even verbal functions. For instance, fop can be the adverb 'completely', or the quantifier 'all' in a partitive construction:

 fop no ɓoxole aɓalga ɓalig
 ‘All of the dogs are black.’

The ability of adverbs to be used as verbs can be illustrated with these minimal pairs:

 retam ñofu	               ñofam o ret
 ‘I go quickly.’	       ‘I hurry up and go.’

 weʄi ñofu	               ñofi weʄ
 ‘Swim quickly!’              ‘Hurry up and swim!'	

Go back to: Sereer Grammar

Oana 00:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)