Wolof exhibits various complex linguistic phenomena which can be a challenge for any large-scale computational grammars which aim to cover a realistic and representative portion of a natural language. Some of its most salient typological features are the following:
– a complex agreement system (gender/noun class agreement).
– a verbal complex with suffixes encoding valency changes. The valency change can be classified into various types: causative, applicative, possessive, neutro-passive, co-participation, etc.). Thus, the morphological complexity having a direct impact on syntactic analysis.
– a complex verbal system involving asymmetries: tense, polarity, mood, aspect.
– a grammaticalized, syntactic means of expressing focus (via cleft constructions).
– cleft constructions associated with copular constructions and WH formation.
-a pro-drop / null subject language involving also pronoun incorporation.
– a clitic system in which the pronominal inflections, the aspect auxiliary, pronominal and locative objects, and a class of pronouns are all clitics. There is also a notorious interaction between cliticization and focus.
Initial ideas about the treatment of some of these phenomena in an LFG framework will be presented and discussed.
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