Senegambian languages

Senegambian
Northern (West) Atlantic [reduced]
Geographic distribution:	Mauritania to Guinea
Linguistic classification:	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Senegambian
Subdivisions:	Fula–Serer Tenda Cangin Buy–Nyun Wolof Nalu

The Senegambian or (reduced) Northern (West) Atlantic languages are a branch of Niger–Congo languages spoken primarily in southern Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea; the transhumant Fula, howewever, have spread with their language from Senegal across the western and central Sahel. The most populous unitary language is Wolof, the national language of Senegal, with four million native speakers and millions more second-language users. There are perhaps 13 million speakers of the various varieties of Fula, and over a million speakers of Serer.

Noun classes

West Atlantic languages have noun class systems similar to those found in other Niger–Congo languages, most famously the Bantu languages. Bantu noun classes are marked with prefixes, and linguists generally believe that this reflects the proto-Niger–Congo system. The Fula–Serer languages, however, have noun class suffixes, or a combination of prefixes and suffixes. Joseph Greenberg argued that the suffixed forms arose from independent post-posed determiners that agreed with the noun class:

CL-Noun CL-Det → CL-Noun-CL → Noun-CL

Consonant mutation

The Senegamibian languages (Northern Atlantic minus Bak) are well-known for their consonant mutation, a phenomenon in which the initial consonant of a word change depending on its morphological and/or syntactic environment. In Fula, for example, the initial consonant of many nouns changes depending on whether it is singular or plural:

pul-lo	"Fulani person"	ful-ɓe	"Fulani people"
guj-jo	"thief"	wuy-ɓe	"thieves"

Classification

Northern Atlantic is a traditional branch of West Atlantic. However, West Atlantic is a geographic and typological rather than genealogical grouping. The Bak languages were removed from Northern Atlantic by Segerer (2010), with the remaining languages seen as a genealogical group marked by consonant mutation. The old Senegambian branch (Serer–Fulani–Wolof) spans this remainder apart for Nalu, and the languages apart from Nalu are spoken in Senegambia. The languages apart from the Wolof–Nyun and Nalu branches (*) all have implosive consonants, while Serer and Fula share noun-class suffixes.

Senegambian	*  Fula–Serer  Fula (Fulani, Peul, Pulaar, Fulfulde) Serer  Tenda  Basari–Bedik Konyagi (Wamei) Biafada–Pajade (Badjara) Cangin languages Wolof  Buy–Nyun  Kasanga, Kobiana (Buy) Banyum (Nyun) Nalu (Baga Mboteni, Mbulungish, Nalu)

Classifications, including the one in Ethnologue 16, have often shown Wolof and Serer as being closely related. However, this is due to a misreading of Sapir (1971) by Wilson (1989).

References

• David Sapir, 1971. "West Atlantic: an inventory of the languages, their noun-class systems and consonant alternation". In Sebeok, ed, Current trends in linguistics, 7: linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa. Mouton, 45–112
• Guillaume Serere & Florian Lionnet 2010. "'Isolates' in 'Atlantic'". Language Isolates in Africa workshop, Lyon, Dec. 4