Family: Trans-New Guinea
Genus: Asmat-Kamoro

Asmat

WALS coordinates: 5° 30′ S, 138° 30′ E

Find examples here.

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:	Citak, Tamnim
Ruhlen:
Routledge:
Other:	Asmat (Flamingo Bay)
ISO 639-3:	tml

Features

ID	Feature	Value	Area
1A	Consonant Inventories	Average	Phonology	comment
2A	Vowel Quality Inventories	Average (5-6)	Phonology	comment
3A	Consonant-Vowel Ratio	Low	Phonology	comment
4A	Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives	No voicing constrast	Phonology	comment
5A	Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems	Other	Phonology	comment
6A	Uvular Consonants	None	Phonology	comment
7A	Glottalized Consonants	No glottalized consonants	Phonology	comment
8A	Lateral Consonants	No laterals	Phonology	comment
9A	The Velar Nasal	No velar nasal	Phonology	comment
10A	Vowel Nasalization	Contrast absent	Phonology	comment
11A	Front Rounded Vowels	None	Phonology	comment
12A	Syllable Structure	Moderately complex	Phonology	comment
13A	Tone	No tones	Phonology	comment
14A	Fixed Stress Locations	Ultimate	Phonology	comment
15A	Weight-Sensitive Stress	Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity)	Phonology	comment
16A	Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems	Lexical stress	Phonology	comment
17A	Rhythm Types	Iambic	Phonology	comment
18A	Absence of Common Consonants	All present	Phonology	comment
19A	Presence of Uncommon Consonants	None	Phonology	comment
20A	Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives	Exclusively concatenative	Morphology	comment
21A	Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives	No case	Morphology	comment
21B	Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection	monoexponential TAM	Morphology	comment
22A	Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb	4-5 categories per word	Morphology	comment
23A	Locus of Marking in the Clause	Head marking	Morphology	comment
24A	Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases	No marking	Morphology	comment examples
25A	Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology	Inconsistent or other	Morphology	comment
25B	Zero Marking of A and P Arguments	Non-zero marking	Morphology	comment
26A	Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology	Strongly suffixing	Morphology	comment
27A	Reduplication	Productive full and partial reduplication	Morphology	comment
28A	Case Syncretism	No case marking	Morphology	comment
29A	Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking	Not syncretic	Morphology	comment
30A	Number of Genders	None	Nominal Categories	comment
31A	Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems	No gender	Nominal Categories	comment
32A	Systems of Gender Assignment	No gender	Nominal Categories	comment
33A	Coding of Nominal Plurality	Plural suffix	Nominal Categories	comment
35A	Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns	Person stem + pronominal plural affix	Nominal Categories	comment
36A	The Associative Plural	Unique periphrastic associative plural	Nominal Categories	comment examples
37A	Definite Articles	Demonstrative word used as definite article	Nominal Categories	comment
39A	Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns	No inclusive/exclusive	Nominal Categories	comment
40A	Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection	No inclusive/exclusive	Nominal Categories	comment
41A	Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives	Four-way contrast	Nominal Categories	comment
43A	Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives	Related to non-remote demonstratives	Nominal Categories	comment examples
44A	Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns	No gender distinctions	Nominal Categories	comment
45A	Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns	No politeness distinction	Nominal Categories	comment
47A	Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns	Identical	Nominal Categories	comment
48A	Person Marking on Adpositions	No person marking	Nominal Categories	comment
49A	Number of Cases	No morphological case-marking	Nominal Categories	comment
50A	Asymmetrical Case-Marking	No case-marking	Nominal Categories	comment
51A	Position of Case Affixes	No case affixes or adpositional clitics	Nominal Categories	comment
57A	Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes	No possessive affixes	Nominal Categories	comment
58A	Obligatory Possessive Inflection	Exists	Nominal Syntax	comment
58B	Number of Possessive Nouns	None reported	Nominal Syntax	comment
59A	Possessive Classification	Two classes	Nominal Syntax	comment
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, 2-3 remoteness distinctions	Verbal Categories	comment
67A	The Future Tense	Inflectional future exists	Verbal Categories	comment
68A	The Perfect	Other perfect	Verbal Categories	comment
69A	Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes	Tense-aspect suffixes	Verbal Categories	comment
70A	The Morphological Imperative	Second person number-neutral	Verbal Categories	comment
72A	Imperative-Hortative Systems	Neither type of system	Verbal Categories	comment
73A	The Optative	Inflectional optative absent	Verbal Categories	comment
74A	Situational Possibility	Affixes on verbs	Verbal Categories	comment
75A	Epistemic Possibility	Affixes on verbs	Verbal Categories	comment
76A	Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking	No overlap	Verbal Categories	comment
77A	Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality	Indirect only	Verbal Categories	comment
78A	Coding of Evidentiality	Verbal affix or clitic	Verbal Categories	comment
79A	Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect	None	Verbal Categories	comment
79B	Suppletion in Imperatives and Hortatives	None (= no suppletive imperatives reported in the reference material)	Verbal Categories	comment
80A	Verbal Number and Suppletion	None	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 adpositions	Word Order	comment
86A	Order of Genitive and Noun	Genitive-Noun	Word Order	comment
87A	Order of Adjective and Noun	Noun-Adjective	Word Order	comment
88A	Order of Demonstrative and Noun	Demonstrative-Noun	Word Order	comment
89A	Order of Numeral and Noun	Noun-Numeral	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
91A	Order of Degree Word and Adjective	Adjective-Degree word	Word Order	comment
92A	Position of Polar Question Particles	Final	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
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 NAdj	Word Order	comment
98A	Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases	Neutral	Simple Clauses	comment examples
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	Zero in all 3sg forms	Simple Clauses	comment
104A	Order of Person Markers on the Verb	P precedes A	Simple Clauses	comment
106A	Reciprocal Constructions	Distinct from reflexive	Simple Clauses	comment examples
107A	Passive Constructions	Absent	Simple Clauses	comment
108A	Antipassive Constructions	No antipassive	Simple Clauses	comment
108B	Productivity of the Antipassive Construction	no antipassive	Simple Clauses	comment
109A	Applicative Constructions	Benefactive object; only transitive	Simple Clauses	comment
109B	Other Roles of Applied Objects	No other roles (= Only benefactive)	Simple Clauses	comment
111A	Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions	Morphological but no compound	Simple Clauses	comment
112A	Negative Morphemes	Negative particle	Simple Clauses	comment
113A	Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation	Both	Simple Clauses	comment
114A	Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation	A/NonReal	Simple Clauses	comment
116A	Polar Questions	Question particle	Simple Clauses	comment
117A	Predicative Possession	Topic	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	Possible	Simple Clauses	comment examples
136A	M-T Pronouns	No M-T pronouns	Lexicon	comment examples
136B	M in First Person Singular	No m in first person singular	Lexicon	comment
137A	N-M Pronouns	N-M pronouns, non-paradigmatic	Lexicon	comment examples
137B	M in Second Person Singular	m in second person singular	Lexicon	comment
143A	Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb	VNeg	Word Order	comment
143E	Preverbal Negative Morphemes	None	Word Order	comment
143F	Postverbal Negative Morphemes	VNeg	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	SOVNeg	Word Order	comment
144B	Position of negative words relative to beginning and end of clause and with respect to adjacency to verb	Immed postverbal	Word Order	comment
144L	The Position of Negative Morphemes in SOV Languages	SOVNeg	Word Order	comment
144P	NegSOV Order	No NegSOV	Word Order	comment
144Q	SNegOV Order	No SNegOV	Word Order	comment
144R	SONegV Order	No SONegV	Word Order	comment
144S	SOVNeg Order	Word&NoDoubleNeg	Word Order	comment