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.