Amuesha

WALS coordinates: 10° 30′ S, 75° 25′ W

spoken in Peru

Alternative Names

Feature	Value	References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories	Moderately large
Vowel Quality Inventories	Small (2-4)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio	High
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives	In fricatives alone
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems	Other
Uvular Consonants	None
Glottalized Consonants	No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants	Laterals, but no /l/, no obstruent laterals
The Velar Nasal	No velar nasal
Front Rounded Vowels	None
Syllable Structure	Moderately complex
Tone	No tones
Absence of Common Consonants	All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants	None
Nominal Categories
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns	No gender distinctions
Indefinite Pronouns	Interrogative-based
Person Marking on Adpositions	No person marking
Number of Cases	Exclusively borderline case-marking
Asymmetrical Case-Marking	Symmetrical
Verbal Categories
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality	Indirect only
Coding of Evidentiality	Verbal affix or clitic
Simple Clauses
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking	Active
Verbal Person Marking	Both the A and P arguments
Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking	Zero in all 3rd person forms
Order of Person Markers on the Verb	A precedes P
Reciprocal Constructions	Distinct from reflexive
Passive Constructions	Present
Lexicon
Hand and Arm	Different
Finger and Hand	Different