Sereer Grammar
This is the Wiki page for research on the Saalum (or Saloum) dialect of Sereer, as conducted by the 2012-2013 Graduate Field Methods class in the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics.
Sereer is a language of the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo languages spoken by 1.2 million people in Senegal and 30,000 in The Gambia. It is the principal language of the Sereer people. Some documentation of Sereer exists; however, most existing documentation is for the significantly different Siin dialect (MacLaughlin 1994, 2000, 2005).
Morphosyntactically, Sereer is largely head-initial, suffixing, and agglutinative (especially in the case of derivational verbal morphology). A clause's tense, aspect, person-number agreement, and negation are most frequently expressed in polyexponent verbal suffixes, although prefixing or procliticizing of person-number agreement sometimes occurs. The language is notable for its extensive noun class concord and its system of consonant mutations, the latter of which is exploited in the language's numerous processes of nonconcatenative inflectional and derivational morphology. Sereer also makes use of an unusually large number of stop consonants, including areally unusual uvulars and an extremely rare series of phonemic voiceless implosive stops.
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 PDFs of class presentations and class assignments here.
Find code here to make things (tables, interlinear glosses) on the Wiki.
Phonology
The phonology of Sereer is characterized by a large inventory of consonants, particularly stops, and a vowel length distinction. The surface form of these segments is fairly predictable, due in part to the relatively rigid phonotactics of Sereer. Sereer has stress rather than tone.
Main article: Phonological Inventory
Phonological Inventory
Consonants
The 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.
Some discussion of the notable properties of this inventory should be provided.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| V'less | p | t | c | k | q | ʔ (') | |
| Voi. | b | d | ɟ (j) | g | |||
| Stops | Impl. | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | |||
| V'less Impl. | ƥ | ƭ | ƈ | ||||
| Prenas. | ᵐb (mb) | ⁿd (nd) | ᶮɟ (nj) | ᵑg (ng) | ᶰɢ (nq) | ||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ (ñ) | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | f | s | χ (x) | ||||
| Tap/Trill | r | ||||||
| Liquid | l | ||||||
| Glide | w | j (y) |
Additional information about the realization of these consonants as well as minimal pairs can be found in the more detailed description of the Phonological Inventory. Spectrograms and Audio Samples of Consonants are also available.
Vowels
The vowel inventory of Sereer Saalum is given below. Vowel length is contrastive; all vowels have long versions.
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ii | u uu | ||
| Mid | e ee | o oo | ||
| Low | a aa |
Vowels after implosive consonants are sometimes creaky; this is not contrastive.
Vowel hiatus, perhaps on an attached page?
Phonotactics
Maximal syllable structure is CVC. The syllable template more broadly seems to be (C)V(V)(C), with an optional onset and coda, and the option of short or long vowels completely independent of these. Any C may appear in the onset, and so far it appears that any C may appear in the coda. To perform this analysis is it necessary to assume that prenasalized stops, which may occur alone in both onsets and codas, are actually single segments rather than sequences of nasal + voiced stop.
For more on this topic, see Phonotactics.
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. The text in the sections should be roughly equivalent to what would be the introduction to this section in the grammar.
Morphophonological Processes
Consonant mutation
(text)
Reduplication
(text)
Vowel hiatus (word internal)
(text)
Nominal Morphology
Here there should be basic descriptions of noun classes (how many?, etc.) and examples of how they are determined based on modifiers, determiners, etc.
Noun classes and number
Adjectives
Number
Possessives
Determiners and Demonstratives
Determiners and Demonstratives
Verbal Morphology
Sereer inflectional morphology includes affixes, proclitics, and auxilliary verbs. Subject marking is obligatory on verbs. Object marking may occur with pronominal objects but is not obligatory. Subject marking is usually prefixal, while objects suffixal. Either tense or aspect must be marked on verbs that are not in citation form, but not both. Tenses are verb suffixes, while aspect marking consists of clitics, or an auxiliary verb which come before the main verb root.
Inflectional Verbal Morphology
Subject Marking
The system of verbal subject marking in Sereer is quite intricate. Agreement is for peson and number of the subject, distinguishing first, second, and third person, and singular and plural. The form of subject agreement is conditioned (at least) by clause type, negation, focus, and presence or absence of auxiliaries. Most subject agreement morphemes are prefixes. In addition, to subject prefixes, verbs with plurals subjects undergo stem-initial consonant mutation.
It is not clear how many distinct paradigms of subject markers one should analyze for Sereer at this time, though there seem to be at least three.
Tense and aspect
Tense (and aspect) Paradigm Table
Derivational morphology
Derivational Verbal Morphology
Negation
Object marking
Pronominal objects are marked by suffixes (or perhaps enclitics) in the verb. Such markers are not agreement since they are in complimentary distribution with full nominal objects.
Syntax
- Basic order is S-V-O, etc.
- Sereer is mostly head initial/final, evidence from auxiliaries, relatives, adpositions, etc.
main clause word order and pronominalization
- many of these data should be included in the following section
Verb phrases
(needs)
- Basic information about the realization of internal arguments of verbs (VO or OV?)
- How are ditransitives ordered?
- How are applicative arguments ordered?
- Where do adverbs and other modifiers occur relative to verbal arguments?
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)
Noun phrases
(needs)
- Basic order of noun phrase elements
- Comments on concord/agreement in the noun phrase
Main article: Noun Phrases
Compounds Should this actually be called "compounds"? These seem more like using measure words to quantify amounts of mass nouns. Faytak 18:42, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Adjectives and Adverbs
- What morphology is distinctive of adjectives? Adverbs?
- How are comparatives and superlatives marked?
Adpositions
Adpositions serve to mark a semantic relationship between adjacent noun phrases in a sentence. Sereer exhibits exclusively prepositions, which are morphologically free particles.
Negation
Questions
Focus Marking
Sereer has grammaticalized focus marking, which involves fronting of the focused element and (sometimes) specific verbal morphology. Fronting and focus morphology on the verb is also characteristic of wh-questions.
Extraction or Focus We should probably just take this page and integrate it in with this section for now --Nico 07:48, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Mood
Subordination
There are several types of clausal subordination in Sereer:
Texts
File:121011G 067 Sereer time anecdote.wav
File:Sereer 121010I MR millet text.wav
File:Sereer 121010I MR millet text.TextGrid
Other Pages
- MediaWiki Handbook - Bari grammar (old main page) - Recordings and transcriptions (Bari) - Bari lexicon
