The Syntax of experiencers in Sereer-Siin

The special grammatical status of experiencers has been at the center of various
studies within linguistics for several decades (Belletti & Rizzi 1988; Ameka 1990;
Pesetsky 1995). This attention is due to the fact that there are specific syntactic fea-
tures that are only associated with experiencers (Landau 2010). This study investi-
gates object experiencers in Sereer-Siin – a dialect of Sereer, a West Atlantic lan-
guage of the Niger Congo family spoken in Senegal. I show that object experiencers
in Sereer can be classified in two groups according to their syntactic behavior. In
this study I provide evidence that Sereer experiencers can be used to extend Belletti
and Rizzi’s traditional classification of experiencers. Using data from Italian, Bel-
letti and Rizzi have classified object experiencers in two groups. The first one they
refer to as class II, has a nominative theme and an accusative experiencer whereas
the second one, class III, has a nominative theme and a dative experiencer. In Sereer,
like in Italian, different properties of object experiencers account for asymmetries
noted with respect to constructions like passive, antipassive and nominalization.