Amharic
WALS coordinates: 10° N, 38° E
spoken in Ethiopia
Find examples here.
Alternative Names
| Ethnologue: | |
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| Ruhlen: |
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| Routledge: |
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| Other: |
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| ISO 639-3: |
Features
| ID | Feature | Value | Area | References | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Consonant Inventories | Moderately large | Phonology | comment | |
| 2A | Vowel Quality Inventories | Large (7-14) | Phonology | comment | |
| 3A | Consonant-Vowel Ratio | Moderately high | Phonology | comment | |
| 4A | Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives | In plosives alone | Phonology | comment | |
| 5A | Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | Phonology | comment | |
| 6A | Uvular Consonants | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 7A | Glottalized Consonants | Ejectives only | Phonology | comment | |
| 8A | Lateral Consonants | /l/, no obstruent laterals | Phonology | comment | |
| 9A | The Velar Nasal | No velar nasal | Phonology | comment | |
| 11A | Front Rounded Vowels | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 12A | Syllable Structure | Moderately complex | Phonology | comment | |
| 13A | Tone | No tones | Phonology | comment | |
| 18A | Absence of Common Consonants | All present | Phonology | comment | |
| 19A | Presence of Uncommon Consonants | None | Phonology | comment | |
| 26A | Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology | Weakly suffixing | Morphology | comment | |
| 27A | Reduplication | Productive full and partial reduplication | Morphology | comment | |
| 30A | Number of Genders | Two | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 31A | Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems | Sex-based | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 32A | Systems of Gender Assignment | Semantic and formal | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 33A | Coding of Nominal Plurality | Plural suffix | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 35A | Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns | Person-number stem | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 36A | The Associative Plural | Unique affixal associative plural | Nominal Categories |
comment
examples |
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| 37A | Definite Articles | Definite word distinct from demonstrative | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 38A | Indefinite Articles | Indefinite word same as 'one' | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 44A | Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns | In 3rd person + 1st and/or 2nd person | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 47A | Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns | Identical | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 48A | Person Marking on Adpositions | Pronouns only | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 49A | Number of Cases | 2 cases | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 50A | Asymmetrical Case-Marking | Symmetrical | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 51A | Position of Case Affixes | Case suffixes | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 54A | Distributive Numerals | Marked by reduplication | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 55A | Numeral Classifiers | Absent | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 57A | Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes | Possessive suffixes | Nominal Categories | comment | |
| 58A | Obligatory Possessive Inflection | Absent | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 58B | Number of Possessive Nouns | None reported | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 59A | Possessive Classification | No possessive classification | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 62A | Action Nominal Constructions | Possessive-Accusative | Nominal Syntax |
comment
examples |
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| 63A | Noun Phrase Conjunction | 'And' different from 'with' | Nominal Syntax | comment | |
| 65A | Perfective/Imperfective Aspect | No grammatical marking | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 66A | The Past Tense | Present, no remoteness distinctions | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 67A | The Future Tense | No inflectional future | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 68A | The Perfect | Other perfect | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 69A | Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes | Mixed type | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 70A | The Morphological Imperative | Second singular and second plural | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 71A | The Prohibitive | Special imperative + special negative | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 72A | Imperative-Hortative Systems | Neither type of system | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 74A | Situational Possibility | Verbal constructions | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 75A | Epistemic Possibility | Verbal constructions | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 76A | Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking | No overlap | Verbal Categories | comment | |
| 81A | Order of Subject, Object and Verb | SOV | Word Order | comment | |
| 82A | Order of Subject and Verb | SV | Word Order | comment | |
| 83A | Order of Object and Verb | OV | Word Order | comment | |
| 85A | Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | No dominant order | Word Order | comment | |
| 86A | Order of Genitive and Noun | Genitive-Noun | Word Order | comment | |
| 87A | Order of Adjective and Noun | Adjective-Noun | Word Order | comment | |
| 88A | Order of Demonstrative and Noun | Demonstrative-Noun | Word Order | comment | |
| 89A | Order of Numeral and Noun | Numeral-Noun | Word Order | comment | |
| 90A | Order of Relative Clause and Noun | Relative clause-Noun | Word Order | comment | |
| 90B | Prenominal relative clauses | Relative clause-Noun (RelN) dominant | Word Order | comment | |
| 93A | Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions | Not initial interrogative phrase | Word Order | comment | |
| 94A | Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause | Final subordinator word | Word Order | comment | |
| 95A | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase | Other | Word Order | comment | |
| 96A | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun | OV and RelN | Word Order | comment | |
| 97A | Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun | OV and AdjN | Word Order | comment | |
| 100A | Alignment of Verbal Person Marking | Accusative | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 101A | Expression of Pronominal Subjects | Subject affixes on verb | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 102A | Verbal Person Marking | Both the A and P arguments | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 103A | Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking | No zero realization | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 104A | Order of Person Markers on the Verb | A precedes P | Simple Clauses |
comment
examples |
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| 105A | Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' | Double-object construction | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 107A | Passive Constructions | Present | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 111A | Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions | Morphological but no compound | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 112A | Negative Morphemes | Double negation | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 116A | Polar Questions | Mixture of previous two types | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 117A | Predicative Possession | Locational | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 118A | Predicative Adjectives | Nonverbal encoding | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 119A | Nominal and Locational Predication | Identical | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 120A | Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals | Impossible | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 121A | Comparative Constructions | Locational | Simple Clauses | comment | |
| 129A | Hand and Arm | Identical | Lexicon |
comment
examples |
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| 130A | Finger and Hand | Different | Lexicon |
comment
examples |
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| 131A | Numeral Bases | Decimal | Lexicon | comment | |
| 136A | M-T Pronouns | No M-T pronouns | Lexicon | comment | |
| 136B | M in First Person Singular | No m in first person singular | Lexicon | comment | |
| 137A | N-M Pronouns | No N-M pronouns | Lexicon | comment | |
| 137B | M in Second Person Singular | No m in second person singular | Lexicon | comment | |
| 138A | Tea | Words derived from Sinitic cha | Lexicon |
comment
examples |
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| 143A | Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb | ObligDoubleNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 143B | Obligatory Double Negation | [Neg-V-Neg] | Word Order | comment | |
| 143E | Preverbal Negative Morphemes | [Neg-V] | Word Order | comment | |
| 143F | Postverbal Negative Morphemes | [V-Neg] | Word Order | comment | |
| 143G | Minor morphological means of signaling negation | None | Word Order | comment | |
| 144A | Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb | ObligDoubleNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 144L | The Position of Negative Morphemes in SOV Languages | ObligDoubleNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 144N | Obligatory Double Negation in SOV languages | SO[Neg-V-Neg] | Word Order | comment | |
| 144P | NegSOV Order | No NegSOV | Word Order | comment | |
| 144Q | SNegOV Order | No SNegOV | Word Order | comment | |
| 144R | SONegV Order | Prefix&OnlyWithAnotherNeg | Word Order | comment | |
| 144S | SOVNeg Order | Suffix&OnlyWithAnotherNeg | Word Order | comment |
