1. Family: Sino-Tibetan
  2. Subfamily: Tibeto-Burman
  3. Genus: Bai

Bai

WALS coordinates: 26° N, 100° E

spoken in China

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
    Routledge:
      Other:
      • Minchia
      ISO 639-3:

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Phonology
      Consonant Inventories Moderately small
      Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
      Consonant-Vowel Ratio Low
      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 /l/, no obstruent laterals
      Front Rounded Vowels None
      Syllable Structure Moderately complex
      Tone Complex tone system
      Absence of Common Consonants All present
      Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
      Morphology
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Little affixation
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural word
      Position of Case Affixes No case affixes or adpositional clitics
      Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes No possessive affixes
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes No tense-aspect inflection
      Word Order
      Order of Subject, Object and Verb SVO
      Order of Subject and Verb SV
      Order of Object and Verb VO
      Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb No dominant order
      Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase No dominant order
      Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
      Order of Adjective and Noun No dominant order
      Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
      Order of Numeral and Noun Noun-Numeral
      Order of Relative Clause and Noun Relative clause-Noun
      Position of Polar Question Particles Final
      Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Other
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun VO and RelN
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun Other
      Simple Clauses
      Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Indirect-object construction
      Polar Questions Question particle