Baïnounk Gujaher

Abstract This chapter presents an overview of the sociolinguistic setting and information on core elements of grammar of Gujaher, a Baïnounk language of the Nyun branch of North Atlantic. Gujaher is spoken in ca. twenty villages in the Lower Casamance region of southwestern Senegal and neighbouring Guinea-Bissau. Sociolinguistically, settlements associated with Gujaher as the patrimonial language are associated with longstanding multilingualism based on great mobility and the practice of founders to welcome and host strangers. Linguistically, Gujaher stands out because of its complex noun class typical for Nyun-Buy languages which is underrepresented in linguistic theorizing. Like other languages in the Nyun-Buy cluster and surrounding Joola languages, the Gujaher noun class system is remarkable because of the high number of genders and the existence of triadic noun class paradigms or genders and of plural suffixes encoding number outside the noun class system. Noun class agreement in Gujaher is partly alliterative, partly semantic (based on animacy), and partly based on formal non-alliterative agreement. Gujaher non-finite verb forms are well integrated into the noun class system and occur with several noun class markers, which create different types of nominalization. Contrary to other Nyun varieties, Gujaher does not exhibit subject agreement on the verb in indicative mood, only in the subjunctive.