Wolof/Grammar

Grammar documentation - Wolof

• General overview of Wolof grammar
• Long academic grammatical description
• Noun classification resource
• Notable characteristics of Wolof Grammar
• Wolof Grammar Manual
• "Content question words and noun class markers in Wolof: reconstructing a puzzle"

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
• Although the classification system is far from simple, some categories include "liquids (m-class), trees (b-class), fruits (g-class), and family

members, especially those of maternal descent U-c1ass). Although the m-class contains certain liquids such as ndox 'water', meew 'milk', saw 'urine' and soow 'curdled milk', it also contains many words that are not liquids, and there are a great number of liquids that do not fall into that class, such as deret (j-class) 'blood', diwlin (j-class) 'vegetable oil', and kokaa (b-class) 'Coca-Cola'"

examples

• noun class examples with determiners
  • determiners will always have a prefix based on noun class and cannot exist without a class morpheme (ask about putting eng glossing after the arrows instead since the lemma cannot exist independently)
    • singular and plural noun class markers can occur on many other dependents including the definite article of a noun phrase, however, the examples will be given in determiners as the class prefixes remain the same

singular determiners

nit<n><cl1> ↔ nit	i <det><cl1><sg> ↔ ki	The person
tëgg<n><cl2> ↔ tëgg	i <det><cl2><sg> ↔ bi	The blacksmith
kër<n><cl3> ↔ kër	i <det><cl3><sg> ↔ gi	The house
jigéen<n><cl4> ↔ jigéen	i <det><cl4><sg> ↔ ji	The woman
ngunu<n><cl5> ↔ ngunu	i <det><cl5><sg> ↔ li	The chicken coop
picc<n><cl6> ↔ picc	i <det><cl6><sg> ↔ mi	The bird
ndaw<n><cl7> ↔ ndaw	i <det><cl7><sg> ↔ si	The young woman
waasintoor<n><cl8> ↔ waasintoor	i <det><cl8><sg> ↔ wi	The fish scale

plural determiners

nit<n><pl det> ↔ nit	i <det><cl9><pl> ↔ ñi	The people
kër<n><pl det> ↔ kër	i <det><cl10><pl> ↔ yi	The houses

Pronominal morphemes

Personal Pronouns

Wolof has three types of personal pronouns:

• Independent:
  • Used for emphasis
• Verb-Object:
  • Can be used to replace a nominal direct object
• Verb-Subject (also called Object Emphasis Pronouns in the New Wolof Book)

Table:

English	Independent Pronoun	Object Emphasis Pronoun	Verb-Object Pronoun
I	Devyani Mahajan & Jisu Han	Lakota	lkt
You	Devyani Mahajan & Jisu Han	Lakota	lkt

Voices

Wolof has three voices: active, semi-active, passive.

• semi-active and passive voices are formed by adding the suffix -u

Aali tëj na bunt ba.	Ali closed the door.
Bunt bi tëju na.	The door is closed.
Aali gaañu na.	Ali is injured.

• The passive voice can also be done using the 3rd-person plural form with an active form; this is similar to the English structure "one".

Ñoo ngi may gis.	One has seen me. OR I have been seen.
One [presentative] me see

glosses

xeet-am, muy-toj sa-bopp

son.3pPOSS F.crush 2pPOSS.head

Her son will crush your head,