Sl.No. | Feature | Value | Area |
1 | Consonant Inventories | Average : 25 | Phonology |
2 | Vowel Quality Inventories | Large : 8 | Phonology |
3 | Consonant-Vowel Ratio | Average : 3.12 | Phonology |
4 | Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives | Voicing contrast in plosives alone / pu / 'nose hair' : / bu / 'insect', / taː / 'horse (male)' / daː / 'to lick', / kebaː / 'waist' / ɡebaː / 'thigh' | Phonology |
5 | Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | Phonology |
6 | Uvular Consonants | None | Phonology |
7 | Glottalized Consonants | No glottalized consonants | Phonology |
8 | Lateral Consonants | /l/, no obstruent laterals | Phonology |
9 | Vowel Nasalization | Contrastive nasal vowels present :
/ pa / 'cow' / pã / 'tree' , / dɔ / 'is', / dɔ̃ / 'to beat', / ɡo / 'door', / ɡõ / 'night' , / lo / 'year' / lõ / 'arise' | Phonology |
10 | Velar Nasal | Velar nasal, also initially / ŋa / 'five' | Phonology |
11 | Front Rounded Vowels | None | Phonology |
12 | Syllable structure | simple syllable structure VV CV, CVC, VCV, CVV, CCV, CVCC, CVCCV | Phonology |
13 | Tone | Simple tone system | Phonology |
14 | Common Consonants | All present : bilabials, fricatives, nasal | Phonology |
15 | Uncommon Consonants | None | Phonology |
16 | Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives | Tonal/concatenative | Morphology |
17 | Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology | Strongly suffixing | Morphology |
18 | Reduplication | Full and partial reduplication: /kəlu-kəlu/ 'slowly=-slowly', /jul-jəl/ 'village' | Morphology |
19 | Case Syncretism | Core and non-core cases: Acc-Dat /-la/, Inst- Abl /-naso/ | Morphology |
20 | Number of Genders | no grammatical gender | Nominal Categories |
21 | Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems | Sex-based | Nominal Categories |
22 | Systems of Gender Assignment | Through independent words | Nominal Categories |
23 | Coding of Nominal Plurality | Plural suffix | Nominal Categories |
24 | Occurrence of Nominal Plurality | Plural in all nouns, always obligatory | Nominal Categories |
25 | Indefinite Pronouns | Generic-noun-based indefinites | Nominal Categories |
26 | Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns | Person-number stem | Nominal Categories |
27 | Definite Articles | No definite article but indefinite article | Nominal Categories |
28 | Indefinite Articles | Indefinite word distinct from 'one' | Nominal Categories |
29 | Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns | Inclusive/exclusive | Nominal Categories |
30 | Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives | Two-way contrast : – proximal and remote. | Nominal Categories |
31 | Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives | Related to demonstratives | Nominal Categories |
32 | Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns | honorific & non-honorific | Nominal Categories |
33 | Indefinite Pronouns | Generic-noun-based | Nominal Categories |
34 | Number of Cases | 8-Nom, Erg /so/, Acc /la/, Inst /naso/, Abl /naso/, Loc /na, tero, tena/, Gen /ʃe/, Dat/la/ | Nominal Categories |
35 | Position of Case Affixes | Case suffixes | Nominal Categories |
36 | Ordinal Numerals | None | Nominal Categories |
37 | Perfective/Imperfective Aspect | Grammatical marking | Verbal Categories |
38 | Past Tense | Past/non-past distinction marked; no remoteness distinction | Verbal Categories |
39 | Perfect | Other perfect | Verbal Categories |
40 | Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes | Tense-aspect suffixes | Verbal Categories |
41 | Order of Subject, Object and Verb | SOV | Word Order |
42 | Order of Subject and Verb | SV | Word Order |
43 | Order of Object and Verb | OV | Word Order |
44 | Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | Postpositions | Word Order |
45 | Order of Genitive and Noun | Genitive-Noun | Word Order |
46 | Order of Adjective and Noun | Noun-Adjective | Word Order |
47 | Order of Demonstrative and Noun | Demonstrative word precedes noun (DemN) | Word Order |
48 | Order of Numeral and Noun | Numeral-Noun | Word Order |
49 | Order of Degree Word and Adjective | Adjective-Degree word | Word Order |
50 | Order of Relative Clause and Noun | Relative clause-Noun | Word Order |
51 | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun | OV and NAdj | Word Order |
52 | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | OV and Postpositions | Word Order |
53 | Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions | Mixed | Word Order |
54 | Negative Morphemes | Negative particle / -ma/ | Simple Clauses |
55 | Relativization on Subjects | Relative pronoun | Complex Sentences |
56 | Numeral Bases | Decimal | Lexicon |