This monograph proposes a reconstruction of the lexicon, the morphophonology and the noun class system of Proto-Fula-Sereer (~3500 BP). Fula-Sereer represents one of the six branches of the North-Atlantic group. North-Atlantic, together with the Bak group of languages, forms the Atlantic family, which represents a separate branch within the Niger-Congo macro-family. The lexical reconstruction of the proto-language of a group such as Fula-Sereer requires the solution of a number of questions that are of interest for the general theory of comparative studies. These questions deal with the morphophonological mutations of root-initial consonants. Since consonant mutations were structured into morphological paradigms already at the Proto-Fula-Sereer stage, the evolution of initial consonantism in Fula and Sereer was based not on regular phonetic changes, but on massive irregular analogous changes. The reconstruction of Proto-Fula-Sereer consonant mutations is given in
- Chapter 2. In
- Chapter s 3-6 the author proposes a reconstruction of the initial consonants. Next, the reconstruction of final consonants (
- Chapter 7) as well as vowels (
- Chapter 8) is given. In
- Chapter 9, taking in account the lexical cognates, the long-standing problem of the PFS noun class reconstruction is rediscussed. The Appendix provides a list of ~720 lexical reconstructions and their approximate meanings.