Wolof/Grammar

Grammar documentation - Wolof

• General overview of Wolof grammar
• Long academic grammatical description
• Noun classification resource
• Notable characteristics of Wolof Grammar

Parts of Speech

Wolof is an SVO language

• Verbs are static and do not change for tense, aspect, or mood
• Nouns have 10 classes, 8 of which are singular classes and are marked by specific prefixes, and 2 are plural classes also marked by prefixes
  • However, these prefixes are not morphologically marked on the noun itself, but on the dependent that agrees with the noun
    • Therefore, plural and singular nouns cannot be distinguished unless they occur in a noun phrase
• Pronouns in Wolof are the most morphologically complex
  • separated into five categories: personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, indefinite

Noun classes

Singular Classes	Plural Classes
k-	ñ-
b-	y-
g-
j-
l-
m-
s-
w-

The k- class and it's plural the ñ- class have rigid and exclusive membership. Nouns in this class are:

• k- class includes nit "person", and kef "thing"
• ñ- class includes nit "person", and (speaker dependent) jigeén "women", góor "men", gaa "people"
  • other than these nouns, plural nouns are always in the y- class

Posessives

• samay yax ak sama suux (wol_output.txt line 73) - samay = my (pl) ; sama = my (sing),

glosses

xeet-am, muy-toj sa-bopp

son.3pPOSS F.crush 2pPOSS.head

Her son will crush your head