Possibility and Probability in Siin Seereer Language

Abstract

The present work deals with possibility and probability in Siin Seereer, a language belonging to the West Atlantic branch of the Niger- Congo family. Possibility and probability are two notions which are so close in meaning and that lots of people make confusion in their uses mainly in the verbs and phrases used to express them. The enunciator, focusing on his/her observation of facts, shows the possibility or the probability that the grammatical subject has to realize the predicate. In other words, he/she accounts the possibility or the probability of the realization or the non- realization of the predicative relationship. Thus, we have pointed out that most of the verbs, operators and phrases used to express these concepts are most of the time placed at the beginning of the sentence. Furthermore, there are some verbs which are used to express possibility and that can also be used to express probability if they are combined with other verbs or phrases.